Senior Game Release Architect

Riot Games; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Life insurance

Parental leave

401k with company match

Flexible work schedules

Job summary

Riot Games is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to drive end-to-end game release architecture at a company-wide scale in Los Angeles. You will partner with Release Team leadership and game teams to shape technical direction and ensure reliable release processes that scale with Riot's ambitions.

The role demands deep experience with live game operations, clients, servers, and services, plus the ability to influence cross-team decisions and mentor engineers in a highly collaborative

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience shipping at least one live game.
• Deep end-to-end game shipping lifecycle knowledge.
• Experience across clients, servers, services and content pipelines.
• Strong hands-on engineering and production systems.

Responsibilities

• Define Technical Direction: Shape and execute the strategy for Riot’s centralized game release capabilities, balancing speed, safety, and scale.
• Partner with Game Teams: Work directly with game teams to understand real-world release constraints and ensure centralized solutions directly address production needs.
• Build Cross-Team Alignment: Communicate technical vision clearly, establish trust, and help partners evaluate the value and tradeoffs of centralized release systems.
• Guide End-to-End Architecture: Lead architectural strategy across complex surfaces, including clients, game servers, backend services, content, configuration, and publishing workflows.
• Drive Reliable Release Decisions: Champion cross-team technical decisions that maximize release predictability and safety without sacrificing game team velocity.
• Apply Strong Technical & Product Judgment: Navigate ambiguous release challenges by balancing player impact, workflow efficiency, platform constraints, and time-to-market.
• Advise Leadership: Serve as a trusted technical sounding board, linking engineering strategy and technical investments directly to partner adoption.
• Raise Engineering Standards: Elevate technical design, system architecture, operational rigor, and cross-functional collaboration across the domain.
• Resolve High-Impact Issues: Hands-on diagnose complex technical blockers, build context quickly, and partner directly with engineers to drive solutions through to production.

Skills

Software engineering

Live operations

System architecture

Cross-team collaboration

Job description

Riot Games is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to drive end-to-end game release architecture at a company-wide scale in Los Angeles. You will partner with Release Team leadership and game teams to shape technical direction and ensure reliable release processes that scale with Riot's ambitions.

The role demands deep experience with live game operations, clients, servers, and services, plus the ability to influence cross-team decisions and mentor engineers in a highly collaborative