Senior Software Engineer - Esports

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 is focused on innovating in the broadcast storytelling experience 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 a Senior Software Engineer in Sport IO, 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, 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, web, 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 sites quickly and effectively
• Drive a strong engineering culture, contributing to growth of technical skills in the team and a growth mindset

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience or equivalent in Software Engineering using cloud-native architectures
• 3+ years of experience with AWS (or comparable cloud environments)
• Deep hands-on programming experiences with Java or GoLang
• Ownership over one or more backend cloud services
• Working knowledge and extensive experience providing actionable feedback through code reviews, spec reviews, and architecture designs

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience with management tools such as Jira or GitHub 
• Experience with Agile methodologies such as Scrum or Kanban
• Familiarity with "Infrastructure as Code" and tooling like Terraform
• Familiarity with CI/CD tooling, such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins

Our Perks:

We offer medical, dental, and vision plans that cover you, your spouse/domestic partner, and children. Life insurance, parental leave, plus short-term and long-term disability coverage are also available. Riot will support your retirement benefits with a company match, and double down on your donations of time and money to non-profit charitable organizations. Balance between work and personal life is encouraged with open paid time off, and a play fund so you can broaden and deepen your personal relationship with games.

(Los Angeles only) Base salary range between $143,000 USD - $201,000 USD + incentive compensation + equity + 401K with company match + medical, dental, vision, and life insurance + short and long-term disability + open PTO.

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, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance relating to an applicant's criminal history (LAMC 189.00).