Riot Games · 2 days ago
Senior Data Scientist, Skill & Matchmaking - VALORANT Data Ops
Redwood City, CA
Full-time
Hybrid
Mid, Senior Level
2+ years expRiot Games is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to join their Valorant Data Ops team, where you'll leverage your expertise in data processing and machine learning to enhance player experiences. In this role, you will build production-quality ML models and collaborate with various teams to inform product vision and technical designs.
ComputerDeveloper PlatformPC GamesVideo Games
Responsibilities
Use machine learning to build products or inform decisions that directly improve the player or fan experience
Deeply understand the landscape of skill-related problems across our titles, flag new product opportunities, and establish best practices for experimentation and evaluating success within the context of Skill systems
Own the ML and AI iteration loop including dataset creation, feature engineering, technical discovery and prototyping, model tuning, and model management
Build ML and AI tools and products for game development, working with stakeholders and engineers to design and deploy dashboards, web apps, forecasts, and simulations
Continually improve our data science practice by identifying novel applications of existing capabilities as well as brand new technical approaches to address critical game and business problems
Develop relationships with game producers, designers, QA, product managers, and engineering to ensure ML-oriented game features can launch successfully
Represent data products to non-technical partners and collaborators
Qualification
Required
Experience delivering full-stack solutions from requirements gathering through live deployment, with hands-on ownership of design, coding, testing, and release
Previous experience working on skill-based matchmaking systems (or in optimizing player experiences) for large, multiplayer online games
Masters in Machine Learning, AI, Statistics, Math, or related Computer Science/Quantitative field, or equivalent professional experience (i.e. B.Sci with 3 years of professional experience, etc.)
2+ years of experience with applied data products in gaming or entertainment
Expertise in Python and SQL
Expertise in machine learning frameworks such as tensorflow, torch, scikit-learn, or Spark MLlib
Experience in the design, implementation, and analysis of online experiments
Experience developing and deploying machine learning models at scale
Effective at storytelling with data to a diverse and non-technical audience
Preferred
Previous experience working on skill-based matchmaking systems (or in optimizing player experiences) for large, multiplayer online games
Experience designing and implementing online services and features at scale
Experience with big-data platforms such as Spark and Airflow
Experience with modern deep learning frameworks in practical applications
Familiarity with game development engines, tools, and processes
Fighting game genre exp / passion
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
Company
Riot Games
Riot Games is a global company that develops online games.
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Riot Games has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (98)
2024 (65)
2023 (113)
2022 (80)
2021 (84)
2020 (70)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$21M2018-12-31Series Unknown· $6M
2016-11-14Convertible Note
2011-02-01Acquired
Leadership Team
A. Dylan Jadeja
Chief Executive Officer
Brandon Beck
Co-chairman, Co-founder
Recent News
2026-01-07
Company data provided by crunchbase