Senior Software Engineer, ML Platform

Riot Games is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to help build and scale our next-generation ML Platform, enabling teams across Riot to productionize machine learning models at global scale. In this role, you’ll focus on applying modern MLOps practices: streamlining deployment, simplifying operations, and creating reliable infrastructure that empowers data scientists, ML engineers, and product teams to deliver value quickly and confidently.

As a senior engineer, you’ll design and implement systems for model deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management. You’ll work with both GPU and CPU workloads, support live testing scenarios (A/B and shadow modes), and build tools for versioning and observability. Your contributions will make ML easier to adopt and operate across Riot, helping game and platform teams deliver high-impact machine learning solutions more efficiently.

Responsibilities:

• Design and implement ML inference infrastructure to support real-time and nearline batch model serving, including CPU/GPU-aware orchestration and automated deployment pipelines.
• Collaborate with researchers and game teams to understand product needs and build generalizable, reusable solutions.
• Contribute to CI/CD workflows for ML artifacts, helping enable rapid iteration and safe promotion from development to production.
• Develop and maintain tooling for environment and dependency management (e.g., Conda/Poetry lock files, secure image builds) to ensure reproducible ML runtimes.
• Implement platform observability features such as monitoring, drift detection, resource utilization, and latency tracking.
• Support ML deployment best practices, including multi-version models, blue/green rollouts, shadow deployments, and safe rollback strategies.

Required Qualifications:

• 4+ years of experience in software engineering, with substantial time spent in platform or infrastructure teams
• Experience building and operating distributed systems or production ML platforms, with an interest in model serving infrastructure.
• Hands-on 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 work collaboratively, document clearly, and contribute to team-wide improvements.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience building ML infrastructure within a real-time, or latency-sensitive environment
• Familiarity with ML workflow tools (MLFlow, DVC, LakeFS, etc) 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.