Staff Software Engineer - ML Platform

Riot Games is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to help evolve our next-generation ML Platform, enabling teams across Riot to seamlessly productionize and operate machine learning models at global scale. In this role, you’ll focus on bringing modern MLOps practices to life; streamlining deployment, simplifying ongoing operations, standardizing infrastructure, and giving our teams of data scientists, ML engineers, and product owners the tools to deliver value faster.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you’ll apply MLOps concepts to architect, build, and guide key infrastructure for model deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management. You’ll design for GPU and CPU workloads, support live testing scenarios (A/B, shadow modes), manage model versioning, and ensure the platform is robust, cost-efficient, and extensible. Your contributions will directly power high-impact ML applications across Riot’s games and internal systems, helping the company scale machine learning in a sustainable, consistent, and developer-friendly way.

Responsibilities:

• Design and implement ML inference infrastructure, supporting both real-time and nearline batch use cases, with CPU/GPU-aware orchestration and automated deployment pipelines for scalable model serving.

• Partner with researchers, game teams, and platform engineers to understand product needs and deliver generalizable, reusable solutions.

• Define and build CI/CD workflows for ML artifacts, supporting rapid iteration and safe promotion from dev to production and MLOps practices.

• Develop tooling for environment and dependency management (e.g., Conda/Poetry lock files, secure image builds) to ensure reliable, reproducible ML runtimes.

• Implement platform observability features such as monitoring, drift detection, resource utilization, and latency tracking.

• Establish patterns and tooling for multi-version model support, blue/green and shadow deployments, and rollback.

• Be thoughtful on developer UX and incorporate an iterative approach to improving.

• Provide technical leadership by shaping platform architecture, mentoring engineers, and contributing to team growth.

• Contribute upstream to shared infra initiatives and build a feedback loops and collaboration models with other Riot platform teams

Required Qualifications:

• 6+ years of experience in software engineering, with substantial time spent in platform or infrastructure teams

• Proven technical leadership in building large scale distributed systems, production ML systems or model serving infrastructure at scale

• Deep experience with cloud-native systems (e.g., Kubernetes, containerization, autoscaling, observability stacks)

• Experience with one or more inference serving frameworks (e.g., NVIDIA Triton, KServe, TorchServe, BentoML, Seldon Core etc)

• Familiarity with GPU orchestration, performance tuning, and cost-aware scheduling

• Strong background in CI/CD automation, IaC tools (e.g., Terraform), and artifact management

• Hands-on experience with Python ML ecosystems, package management (Poetry, Conda etc), and vulnerability scanning

• Ability to mentor engineers, write clear documentation, and influence cross-functional stakeholders

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience building ML infrastructure within a real-time, or latency-sensitive environment

• Familiarity with ML workflow tools (MLFlow, DVC, LakeFS, etc), model lifecycle management, and drift monitoring strategies

• Exposure to AB testing and experimentation frameworks, especially in online model evaluation

• Prior success in founding or greenfield platform work, especially building toward multi-tenancy or self-service capabilities

• Passion for player experience, game systems, or creative technology development

• Familiarity/experience with technical deployments in China, particularly in Tencent.

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 players' experiences, this could be your role!

Our Perks:

Riot focuses on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy and 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.

At Riot Games, we put players first. That mission drives every decision in our quest to create games and experiences that make it better to be a player. Whether you’re working directly on a new player-facing experience or you’re supporting the company as a whole, everyone at Riot is part of our mission. And just like in our games, we’re better when we work together. Our goal is to create collaborative teams where you are empowered to bring your unique perspective everyday. If that sounds like the kind of place you want to work, we’re looking forward to your application.

It’s our policy to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and members of Riot Games, Inc. Riot Games makes reasonable accommodations for handicapped and disabled Rioters and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, handicap, veteran status, marital status, criminal history, or any other category protected by applicable federal and state law. We consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including the California Fair Chance Act, the City of Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, and the Washington Fair Chance Act.

Per the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, the following core duties may create a basis for disqualifying candidates with relevant criminal histories:

• Safeguarding confidential and sensitive Company data

• Communication with others, including Rioters and third parties such as vendors, and/or players, including minors

• Accessing Company assets, secure digital systems, and networks

• Ensuring a safe interactive environment for players and other Rioters

These duties are directly related to essential operations, safety, trust, and compliance obligations within our organization. Please note that job duties may evolve based on business needs and additional responsibilities may be assigned as necessary to maintain operational efficiency and security.