Senior Software Engineer - Esports, Game Features

Riot Games was founded in 2006 by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill with the intent to change the way video games are made and supported for players. In 2009, Riot released its debut title League of Legends to worldwide acclaim. The game has since gone on to become the most played PC game in the world and a key driver of the explosive growth of esports. Players are the foundation of our community and it’s for them we continue to evolve and improve the League of Legends experience. Riot Games is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA and has 23 offices worldwide.   

The last 12 months have been amazing for esports at Riot. We held our most-watched League of Legends Worlds Championship, and we ran our first global tournaments for VALORANT, Wild Rift, and Legends of Runeterra. On the back of that success, and in our ever-growing dedication to our mission to be the most player focused company in the world, we are doubling down on our investment in esports. We are doing this through our high-priority focus on Unleashing Fandom, Reinventing the Watch Experience, and through investing in industry-leading innovations like Project Stryker.

The Sport IO team’s mission is to elevate esports competition and operations at all levels of our sports. We do this by focusing on innovating in spaces like broadcast storytelling, training and performance tools, finding and supporting future stars, as well as delivering tools and technology for esports players, teams, and tournaments. We have a mix of user facing experiences through our web properties lolesports.com and valorantesports.com and back-end tools which are used by the broadcast producers and tournament operators.

As the Senior Software Engineer, you’ll be responsible for contributing to architecting and implementing vital upgrades to Riot’s mission-critical Esports systems. These systems deliver near-real-time Esports data and statistics to our viewers and data partners, introduce Esports related in-game features and integrations, manage and run our Esports events, and future non-public projects. 

This role reports to the Engineering Manager in the Esports Sports Innovation and Optimization organization.

Responsibilities:

• You will lead and contribute to technical direction, design, and implementation of the Esports data and game services that drive the future of Esports
• You will lead by technical example, lifting the expertise and skills of people around you through spec reviews, code reviews, documentation, and testing
• You will collaborate with tournament operators and representatives from professional leagues, game engineers, and other engineering organizations to push the cutting edge of Esports
• Contribute to engineering excellence to reduce and mitigate live incidents quickly and effectively
• Drive a strong engineering culture, contributing to growth of technical skills in the team and a growth mindset
• Embrace, maintain and share Game teams’ best practices for coding standards, patterns, reviews and CI/CD

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience or equivalent in Software Engineering
• 1+ years of experience with Game Development and Game Development Patterns(ECS)
• Deep hands-on programming experiences with C++, Java and Lua
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or comparable field or equivalent experience
• Working knowledge and extensive experience providing actionable feedback through code reviews, spec reviews, and architecture designs
• 1+ years of experience with Agile development processes

Desired Qualifications:

• Familiarity with game development engines such as Unreal, Unity or proprietary engines
• Experience with management tools such as Jira or GitHub 
• Experience with Version Control systems used in Game Development (Perforce)
• Familiarity with building game content tools and pipelines
• Familiarity with CI/CD tooling, such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. We will be looking at your past studies, experience, and your personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about the experiences of players, this could be the role for you!

Riot has a focus on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy, in addition to other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner and children, and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.