Staff Software Engineer, Deploy - Developer Connections

Riot Engineers bring deep knowledge of specific technical areas but also value the chance to work in many broader domains. As a Staff Software Engineer, you’ll also dive into projects that focus on team cohesiveness and cross-team objectives. You’ll lead without authority and provide other engineers with a clear illustration of extraordinary engineering.

Developer Connections (DevCon) connects developers around the globe, allowing them to quickly and consistently ship awesome games. We sit at the intersection of Game Teams, E-Sports, Riot Entertainment, and R&D, giving us a broad perspective on development across Riot and keeping our fingers on the pulse of how teams build, release, and operate games. Our mission is to empower and unblock teams so they can hit milestones and launch incredible player experiences. As a Staff Software Engineer focused on deploy and release, you’ll measure your success by how quickly and reliably game developers are able to see their features in games across Riot. You’ll work closely with each game’s build and deploy teams to identify common challenges that should be solved centrally. You’ll be part consultant, part visionary, full-stack engineer. As DevCon expands its platform mission, you’ll also help define and deliver managed foundational capabilities that simplify the developer experience across Riot. This includes contributing to centrally supported services such as managed MySQL databases and managed object storage, ensuring these offerings are reliable, secure, scalable, and effortless for teams to adopt. Your work will remove complex infrastructure burdens, eliminate operational drift, and allow game developers to stay focused on creating world-class content.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with stakeholders (e.g., League, VALORANT, R&D) to understand and support shared release processes and systems, identifying which components should be owned centrally and which patterns should be reusable across production games.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to relieve burdens stemming from non-game-differentiating concerns.
• Partner with Infrastructure, Database teams, and game teams to design, build, and support centrally managed capabilities such as MySQL database services and object storage, establishing consistent patterns that remove operational overhead for teams.
• Define requirements for automation, lifecycle management, and dependency orchestration across build, deploy, release, and managed service workflows; collaborate with DevCon’s Build and Publish teams to ensure reliable delivery.
• Develop provisioning workflows, lifecycle automation, and framework-level abstractions that allow developers to access database and storage resources through simple, unified interfaces without managing underlying cloud or platform complexity.
• Contribute to migration tooling and adoption strategies that help onboard existing workloads into managed capabilities, improving reliability, security posture, and consistency through standardized patterns.
• Lead and contribute to cross-team architectural designs and standards related to release, orchestration, automation, and managed infrastructure.
• Collaborate with teams throughout Riot to leverage shared expertise and solutions, and help shape the technical direction of Riot’s development ecosystem.

Required Qualifications: 

• 6+ years of professional experience as a Software Engineer
• BS in Computer Science, or equivalent understanding of Computer Science fundamentals
• 2+ years of experience with configuration management and infrastructure-as-code technologies (e.g., Terraform, Ansible)

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience leading technical development in large-scale deployment, release, orchestration, or foundational managed service systems
• Experience with modern Release Engineering tooling and deployment automation frameworks (e.g., Spinnaker, ArgoCD, Octopus, proprietary orchestrators)
• Experience building or maintaining deployment workflows for live game services, including blue/green, canary, and rollback strategies
• Experience with cross-platform deployment pipelines (e.g., PC, console certification flows, mobile store release processes)
• Experience designing or integrating managed infrastructure capabilities such as storage services, relational data platforms, or distributed foundational systems
• Experience collaborating across multiple teams, including service owners, QA, LiveOps, and compliance or certification partners
• Familiarity with the tools in a modern game or service developer’s toolbox, and genuine curiosity to learn more

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes 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 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.