Principal Software Engineer - Developer Connections, Game Release

Riot engineers bring deep knowledge of specific technical areas but also value the opportunity to work in a variety of broader domains. As a Principal Software Engineer , you’ll work alongside other engineers to implement technical solutions at a company-wide scale. You’ll collaborate with teams to ensure high quality and stack applicability, and provide other engineers with a clear illustration of extraordinary engineering. Developer Connections (DevCon) connects Riot's developers across Game Studios, R&D, and Central Tech to help teams reliably and efficiently ship and operate games. Our mission is to provide the core systems and capabilities that enable Riot teams to deliver games to any audience on any platform with confidence and ease, keeping developers focused on building exceptional player experiences. As a Principal Software Engineer , you'll serve as a senior technical leader for Riot’s game release ecosystem. In this highly collaborative, game-facing role, you will partner closely with Release Team leadership and game teams across Riot to shape technical direction, bring clarity to complex release challenges, and build trust across partner teams. The ideal candidate possesses deep, firsthand experience with game shipping mechanics—including clients, servers, services, content, publishing constraints, and first-party requirements (console or mobile experience is a major plus)—and will leverage this expertise to drive sound technical decisions and improve how Riot delivers games globally. 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. Required Qualifications: 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of developing and shipping at least one live-operated game. 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. Desired Qualifications: Experience in release engineering, deployment system…