Hiring: Principal Software Engineer - Developer Connections, Game Release Company: Riot Games Location: Los Angeles, CA Job Posted Time: 2026-09-03 14:18:38 Target Skills & Keywords : R, Stakeholder Management About the job Experience: •8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of developing and shipping at least one live-operated game. Required Skills: •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. •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. Qualifications: •Deep domain expertise in the end-to-end game shipping lifecycle, including production workflows, platform constraints, and live operations challenges. •Broad release surface experience across game clients, game servers, backend services, configuration, content pipelines, or release orchestration. •Holistic technical perspective, with a proven ability to connect architectural decisions directly to player experience and operational stability. •Strong hands-on engineering skills, with recent experience designing, building, debugging, and maintaining large-scale production systems. •Proven crisis response & problem-solving ability, adept at stepping into unfamiliar, high-pressure technical situations to diagnose root causes and unblock delivery. •Strong technical leadership experience in ambiguous, cross-team problem spaces, with a track record of successfully delivering impactful results •Proven ability to define technical direction and influence adoption beyond their immediate team •Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to build trust and alignment with game teams and senior technical partners Compensation: •Riot focuses on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy and other perks such as flexible work schedules Interested candidates, please apply directly through the job posting on company's career page or try via AI auto apply on this platform. Don't miss this opportunity to join a forward-thinking team!