About the position
At Riot, Data Engineers play a critical role in transforming data into actionable insights that drive decisions across the company. Our engineers are deeply player-focused and collaborate across diverse teams to enhance the experiences of millions of players worldwide. As a Principal Data Engineer within Riot Discovery Studio, you’ll work directly with game teams at the ground floor, building and shaping data systems from day one. This role is designed for an engineer who thrives in ambiguous environments, takes initiative to solve real problems quickly, and enjoys wearing multiple hats. You’ll play a pivotal role in laying the technical foundation for how we collect, manage, and leverage data across the Riot Discovery Studio game portfolio. You’ll also lead and mentor junior data engineers, providing technical guidance and context. With visibility across all early lifecycle games, this role offers a unique opportunity to drive impact across multiple projects while setting up systems that will scale as games move into production and live operations.
Responsibilities
- Design and optimize scalable ETL pipelines for structured and semi-structured data to support Insights use cases, including independently coding and providing optimizations where applicable.
- Architect and implement robust, maintainable, and high-performance data solutions.
- Collaborate directly with multiple game teams from the early stages of game development to instrument games and ensure proper data collection.
- Own and manage data pipelines and infrastructure throughout the game development lifecycle for assigned game teams.
- Standardize best practices for instrumentation, telemetry, and metrics collection across early lifecycle games.
- Ensure data quality, governance, and compliance with regulatory standards (e.g., GDPR, CCPA).
- Mentor data engineers across all levels, setting best practices and fostering technical growth.
- Automate workflows to reduce manual intervention and enhance data processing efficiency.
- Optimize query performance and resolve pipeline bottlenecks to improve data accessibility.
- Evaluate and adopt new tools, frameworks, and methodologies to advance data engineering capabilities.
- Support cost optimization by ensuring scalable and efficient data solutions.
- Be a leader within Riot’s Data Engineering discipline shaping infrastructure, craft standards, tooling, and organizational best practices.
Requirements
- Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field.
- 8+ years experience in data engineering or a related field.
- Hands-on expertise in big-data technologies, including Python, GoLang, Spark, Scala, SQL, and tools like Airflow and DBT.
- Proficiency in cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP) and Databricks.
- Expertise in designing efficient and scalable data models with large data sets across multiple teams and in collaboration with insights or data stakeholders.
- Demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally with engineering, analytics, and product teams.
- Experience mentoring and guiding other engineers.
Nice-to-haves
- 2+ years of experience in data engineering for major video game titles.
- Experience using analytics to drive gameplay and feature changes (ideally from game dev through launch).
- Experience working in close partnership with data analysts or product managers.
- Close personal relationship with games - enjoys gaming as a hobby, plays a variety of genres, and goes deep in several.
Benefits
- Open paid time off policy.
- Flexible work schedules.
- Medical, dental, and life insurance.
- Parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner, and children.
- 401k with company match.
