As part of Riot’s goal to become the entertainment company of the 21st century, the Player Platform organization is responsible for building a cohesive and seamless experience for Players that interact with the Riot Ecosystem and for our internal games and product teams to leverage, to accelerate the development and publishing cycle of our games and provide a central ecosystem for Riot. 

As the Principal Software Engineer (a.k.a. Initiative Technical Leader) for the Developer Platform organization you’ll be joining what is considered “the tip of the spear” of the Player Platform business unit. We make utilizing the Riot Player Platform intuitive so that our customers can focus on making great games, entertainment, and esports experiences. This leadership role is responsible for the overall technical vision, strategy, and technical delivery in a broad scope, ensuring alignment with the product and player needs, and the company’s overall technical strategy and goals.

Responsibilities:

• Developing, implementing, maintaining a complete technical vision and strategy for the Developer Platform organization, while ensuring their alignment and furthering of Player Platform’s and Riot’s visions
• Ensure all the teams within DevPlat are held to our standards and shared technical goals, as well as identifying opportunities for tech to improve the product and improve sustainable development
• Providing leadership, guidance, and coaching to Developer Platform’s various Tech Leads
• Collaborating with Riot Game Teams like VALORANT, League of Legends, TFT and new in-development games, as well as Experiences teams (e.g. entertainment and esports) on adopting Player Platform’s features and capabilities. This includes working with their technical leaders to wholly understand their needs and challenges when working with central technologies at Riot
• Iterate with Product/Program Managers to share tech vision and goals and account for technical constraints
• Filling mission-critical technical gaps as needed, with the ability to take on and/or provide leadership in complex deep technical projects, as well as broad projects across organization and discipline boundaries.
• Manage relationships across the organization and create opportunities for DevPlat to have Player Platform-wide and Riot-wide impact

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent professional experience
• 10+ years prior experience in Software Engineering
• 3+ years experience as tech leader for large scoped products/teams, or as subject matter expert in engineering domains across multiple teams
• Experience with with cloud computing/technologies, distributed systems, and object-oriented programming
• Experience coaching those around you across all roles, and mentoring mid and senior level engineers
• Experience working with members outside of your immediate organization to achieve team/organization goals
• Experience implementing software engineering best practices within your team

Desired Qualifications:

• Creating a technical vision and the technical strategies to achieve it, aligning an org around it them
• Broad background in languages, platforms, services architectures, mobile, and web
• Experience working on a global scale consumer product or online game
• Experience building SDKs
• Experience building web portals
• Game industry experience

For this role, you’ll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and choices that focus on your fellow Rioters, who are the customers of your work. Being a dedicated fan of games is not necessary for this position!

Our Perks:

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 ourbenefits pages for more information.

Riot Games fosters a player and workplace experience that values teamwork embodied by theSummoner’s Code andCommunity Code. Our culture embraces differences as a strength, and our values are the guiding principles for how we approach work. We are committed to putting diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the center of everything we do, and promoting a fair and collaborative culture where Rioters treat one another with dignity and respect. We encourage you to read more about our value ofthriving together and our ongoing work to build themost inclusive company in gaming

(Los Angeles only) Base salary range between $203,000 USD - $283,000 USD + incentive compensation + equity + 401K with company match + medical, dental, vision, and life insurance + short and long-term disability + open PTO.

(Bellevue only) Base salary range between $203,000 USD - $283,000 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).