Network Engineer III - Infrastructure Reliability

Network Engineers at Riot are tasked with administration, implementation, and design of high performance networking systems to support our global player base. They seek to eliminate the need for human interaction with infrastructure by automating deployments, orchestration, management of physical and cloud based networking devices. As a Network Engineer at Riot, you're knowledgeable in how and when to use automation frameworks like Ansible or Salt, you understand the basic concepts of software programming, and readily use code to create tools to make it easier for Rioters to ship code!

As a Staff Network Engineer on the Infrastructure Reliability team, you will be a critical part of our efforts to ensure the scalability, availability, and performance of our global network serving millions of players across the world. This role demands deep network architectural knowledge in the Service Provider space, and strong experience operating global scale infrastructure. You should have strong coding skills, a passion for automation, and a focus on reliability engineering to deliver robust and maintainable systems. You will work on network design, traffic analysis and engineering, maintaining CI/CD pipeline  and creating tools to enhance observability and streamline troubleshooting for core infrastructure services.

Responsibilities:

• Designing, deploying, and operating the global network: Plan, build, and maintain both new and existing infrastructure to deliver the best possible experience for our players and internal customers.
• Coding and automation: Write clean, efficient, and reusable code to automate operational tasks, improve system reliability, and enable rapid scaling.
• Developing customer-centric tooling: Build tools to simplify and streamline the consumption of cloud resources for internal teams, empowering them to innovate faster.
• Observability and troubleshooting: Enhance monitoring and logging systems to quickly detect, debug, and resolve issues across our infrastructure.
• Mentorship and continuous learning: Guide and mentor junior and senior engineers in systems, cloud, and network engineering, fostering a culture of growth and continuous learning.
• Timezone Collaboration: Partner closely with engineers across various timezones to maximize coverage, responsiveness, and global reach.

Required Qualifications: 

• 5+ years of experience as a senior contributor in a service provider, focused on design and operations for large-scale global networks.
• Expertise in protocols such as BGP, IS-IS, label signalling (RSVP-TE, Segment Routing, LDP), MPLS VPNs (both layer 2 and layer 3), multicast signalling.
• Experienced in operating large-scale web services with strong expertise in OSI layers 4–7 technologies and global load balancing strategies.
• QoS experience across multiple vendor hardware implementations.
• Troubleshooting and Incident Response: Skilled at troubleshooting live incidents, with a proactive approach to minimizing downtime and service impact. Familiarity with Root Cause Analysis (RCA) processes to identify, document, and drive long-term solutions to recurring issues.
• Automation and Scripting: Proficiency in scripting and programming languages like Python and Golang to drive automation, manage deployments, and create tooling.
• Cloud Connectivity: Expertise in AWS connectivity solutions and foundational services (e.g., S3, EC2, EBS). Experience in container management and orchestration with Docker and Kubernetes.
• Adaptability: Ability to quickly adopt and adapt to new technologies, frameworks, and cloud-native tools to solve complex problems

Desired Qualifications:

• Proven experience leading and mentoring a team of engineers, fostering collaboration and technical growth.
• Solid foundation in systems and cloud engineering principles and protocols.
• Strong ITIL Foundations

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes your fellow Rioters, who are the customers of your work. Being a dedicated fan of games is not necessary for this position!

Our Perks:

Riot focuses on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy and other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner, and children, and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.

At Riot Games, we put players first. That mission drives every decision in our quest to create games and experiences that make it better to be a player. Whether you’re working directly on a new player-facing experience or you’re supporting the company as a whole, everyone at Riot is part of our mission. And just like in our games, we’re better when we work together. Our goal is to create collaborative teams where you are empowered to bring your unique perspective everyday. If that sounds like the kind of place you want to work, we’re looking forward to your application.

It’s our policy to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and members of Riot Games, Inc. Riot Games makes reasonable accommodations for handicapped and disabled Rioters and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, handicap, veteran status, marital status, criminal history, or any other category protected by applicable federal and state law. We consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including the California Fair Chance Act, the City of Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, and the Washington Fair Chance Act.

Per the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, the following core duties may create a basis for disqualifying candidates with relevant criminal histories:

• Safeguarding confidential and sensitive Company data
• Communication with others, including Rioters and third parties such as vendors, and/or players, including minors
• Accessing Company assets, secure digital systems, and networks
• Ensuring a safe interactive environment for players and other Rioters

These duties are directly related to essential operations, safety, trust, and compliance obligations within our organization. Please note that job duties may evolve based on business needs and additional responsibilities may be assigned as necessary to maintain operational efficiency and security.