Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Unpublished R&D Product

As a Staff Machine Learning Engineer on an unpublished R&D game project, you will own the strategy, design, and implementation of ML capabilities. You will work closely with developers, designers, and data scientists to understand their needs, and will be hands-on in conceptualizing, planning, implementing, and maintaining ML-driven solutions. We’re looking for someone who is passionate about enabling great player experiences, thrives in cross-disciplinary collaboration, stays current on the latest ML techniques, and can apply them pragmatically to challenging product problems. You will report to the Engineering Manager within the R&D game project.

Responsibilities:

Work closely with developers, designers, and data scientists to identify and define improvement opportunities

Refine modeling and feature strategy for using techniques such as reinforcement learning

Establish pipeline architecture patterns in partnership with central teams; build reusable training and evaluation pipelines that can be adapted to Riot-wide use cases

Drive the application of ML/RL systems to improve decision-making and adaptation

Establish research-to-production practices; balance cutting-edge techniques with production reliability

Establish evaluation practices in partnership with data scientists and analytics partners; guide experiment design for measuring model impact and set technical evaluation standards

Define reliability standards in partnership with design and engineering

Advance and strengthen engineering best practices, including code quality, automated testing, and maintainable architecture

Mentor engineers and partner disciplines through documentation, reviews, and technical design guidance

Identify technical risks and bottlenecks, proposing pragmatic solutions to keep projects moving forward

Required Qualifications:

6+ years of experience delivering ML systems in production, including 3+ years in applied modeling or ML research roles, ideally within real-time or interactive environments

Experience with reinforcement learning, including applying RL to practical production problems

Experience in production environments with interacting models, feedback loops, or systems where model behavior has downstream consequences beyond a single prediction

Proficiency with modern ML/data science libraries and frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, pandas, etc.

Experience collaborating regularly with teammates across multiple disciplines

Strong communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences

B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent experience

Proficiency in Python or similar programming languages

Desired Qualifications:

Experience with multi-agent reinforcement learning

Experience in developer tooling

Experience implementing framework-level UI systems

Experience in infrastructure and MLOps, such as ML cloud services, containers, and model telemetry

Experience working in a AAA game engine (e.g. Unity, Unreal)

Proficiency in C++

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.