Staff Anti-Cheat Analyst - Games Tech Group

Riot Anti-Cheat is a highly adaptive team passionate about their craft. We understand the player impact of cheating in games and are focused on setting the highest bar for the integrity of multiplayer games. As a Staff Analyst on Anti-Cheat, you will report to the Operations Manager. You will be involved with identifying, detecting, and actioning cheats and other nefarious abuses of third-party tools across Riot titles, protecting our games and handling resolutions for player accounts. You will help to lead Anti-Cheat in identification, detection, and prevention of major methods within the cheating ecosystem, as well as other intentional and nefarious impediments to a competitive player experience.

You will be proactive, measured, and innovative in using Riot’s state of the art technology to stay ahead of an evolutionary adversary. You are motivated to maintain and improve the integrity of Riot Games’ titles, fostering a competitive environment for our players. You're comfortable in being able to communicate with both players and internal stakeholders, being able to translate your subject matter expertise into tangible goals, metrics, and resolutions. Your expertise in reverse engineering, data analysis and automation, and modern game engines can enable you to detect and remove the most pervasive of threats to competitive integrity. You'll foster a culture of adaptability, persistence, and collaboration, both through your individual contributions and your leadership of large campaigns. 

Responsibilities:

• Work with the Anti-Cheat team, across multiple disciplines, to identify, detect, and remove violators of Third Party Tools policies across Riot titles.
• Investigate threats hands-on, integrating with cheat communities to acquire intelligence and software samples, identifying and labeling industry trends
• Interface with samples of cheats, using tooling and reverse engineering to create accurate, effective detections.
• Wrangle, interpret, and productionize data, automating accurate detections for cheat classes and other methods of abuse within Riot Vanguard ecosystem
• Inform initiatives on Anti-Cheat engineering iterations, through subject matter expertise and large scale, consumable analysis
• Represent Anti-Cheat in cross-team collaborations, informing game teams of best practices, creating processes to make design recommendations into actions.
• Communicate with legitimate players about Anti-Cheat subjects, contributing to articles and other publications around the matter.
• Lead Anti-Cheat Operations’ technical foundations, advocating and educating on best tech practices for the pod.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelors or higher degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, or equivalent job experience
• Experience in matters of game integrity, including attacking or defending it.
• Excellent teamwork and stakeholder management skills
• 3+ years of experience in data notebooking tools such as Jupyter and Databricks, with ability to both analyze and ETL large data sets
• 3+ years of experience in automation of internal processes and systems, utilizing languages such as Python
• Statistical computing and analysis through programming languages like R or Python
• Proficiency with database querying languages, particularly SQL, to make precise and actionable queries on anomalous behavior
• Analysis and visualization of data into consumable product analytics for internal stakeholders, through usage of data notebooks and dashboarding software like Tableau
• Technical understanding of Windows processes and memory, including CPU modes and other aspects of the operating system security suite
• Familiar with cheat development and process instrumentation techniques
• Expertise with statistical concepts like regression and A/B testing

Desired Qualifications:

• Familiarity with cheating in a competitive environment, understanding the ecosystems and motivations
• Experience with development and version control tools (Visual Studio, Git, WinDbg)
• Direct experience with the Windows Kernel and driver development
• Comfortable reverse engineering applications statically/dynamically
• Knowledge of internal tooling systems, with a comfort to continually learn them

For this role, you will find success through subject matter expertise, and a malleable mindset, adapting to an ever-changing and unpredictable ecosystem. We will look at your past studies, experience, and your personal relationship with games. If you have a passion for competitive integrity, enrichening player experience, and a strong sense of resilience against many unique challenges, this could be the position for you.

Our Perks:

Riot has a focus on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy, in addition to 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.

Riot Games fosters a player and workplace experience that values teamwork embodied by the Summoner's Code and Community Code. Our culture embraces differences as a strength, and our values are the guiding principles for how we approach work. We are committed to putting diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the center of everything we do, and promoting a fair and collaborative culture where Rioters treat one another with dignity and respect. We encourage you to read more about our value of thriving together and our ongoing work to build the most inclusive company in Gaming.

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.