Staff Applied AI/ML Scientist (Anti-Cheat)

Company

Riot Games develops competitive games and player experiences, including anti-cheat technology that protects fair play across its titles and platforms.

What you will do

• Lead modeling strategy across Anti-Cheat’s competitive integrity products.
• Design, build, and maintain adaptive end-to-end AI/ML pipelines and iterative classifiers.
• Develop anomaly detection approaches and production-ready machine learning systems for identifying cheaters and botters.
• Use and improve centralized ML infrastructure, including model serving, observability, CI/CD, and cost-efficiency capabilities.
• Lead technical discovery, prototyping, feature invention, architecture decisions, and evaluation practices across projects.
• Establish recruiting practices, interview candidates, and mentor junior staff.

Requirements

• Ph.D. in machine learning, AI, statistics, mathematics, or a related quantitative/computer science field with 3+ years of industry experience, or equivalent experience with an M.S. and 4–6+ years or a B.S. and 6–8+ years.
• 2+ years of direct experience in anti-cheat, anti-fraud, or anti-virus work.
• Production ML experience covering model serving, CI/CD for ML, observability, cost trade-offs, and daily software development.
• Experience bridging research and production, establishing evaluation practices, and designing experiments to measure model impact.
• Deep knowledge of traditional machine learning, familiarity with deep learning, and experience working with complex or unconventional data sources.
• Ability to explain technical trade-offs to product, design, leadership, and other cross-disciplinary audiences.

Nice to have

• Experience building behavioral-anomaly classifiers for competitive video games.
• Threat detection and classification experience in risk, fraud, insurance, security, sports, or gaming.
• Experience converting research papers or prototypes into reliable shipped systems.
• Passion for games, player experience, or creative technology.

Culture & Benefits

• Open paid time off policy and flexible work schedules.
• Medical, dental, and life insurance.
• Parental leave for employees, spouses or domestic partners, and children.
• 401(k) with company match.
• Collaborative environment focused on player experience and player-first decision-making.