Senior Software Engineer Job Summary
| Property | Details |
| Company Name | Blizzard Entertainment |
| Parent Organization | Activision Blizzard / Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) |
| Job Title | Senior Software Engineer (Temporary Classification) |
| Requisition ID | R027490 |
| Game Team | Diablo Immortal Live Operations & Platform Team |
| Location | Irvine, CA (Blizzard Way) |
| Work Model | Hybrid (On-site / Home split) or Full-Time On-Site |
| Employment Type | Full-Time, Temporary / Contract Status |
| Experience Level | Senior / Domain Expert (Minimum 8+ years) |
| Key Programming Languages | JavaScript, Python, or C# |
| Core Cloud & CI/CD Frameworks | AWS or GCP, Jenkins, Automated Pipelines |
Company Overview
For more than three decades, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. has stood as a premier global developer and publisher of interactive entertainment. Best known for constructing iconic, genre-defining gaming universes—including Warcraft®, Overwatch®, Diablo®, and StarCraft®—Blizzard has earned multiple Game of the Year awards and established a reputation for uncompromising polish. As a primary division of Activision Blizzard, now proudly integrated under the Microsoft ecosystem, the studio engages tens of millions of active players daily across PC, console, and mobile storefronts.
The Diablo Immortal Universe
The minions of Hell grow stronger by the day, and the world of Sanctuary demands elite architects to safeguard its future. Diablo Immortal is our critically acclaimed Massively Multiplayer Action-RPG (MMORPG) built from the ground up to allow heroes to slay demons anywhere, at any time, across mobile (iOS/Android) and PC ecosystems.
Blizzard Entertainment live operations and platform engineering teams are expanding rapidly to meet the needs of our global player base. We operate under the simple belief that a legendary game requires robust, reliable backend support. By prioritizing an inclusive workspace that balances technical excellence with collaborative freedom, we empower our engineers to push the boundaries of real-time server distribution and continuous deployment systems.
The Role (Senior Software Engineer) & Structural Focus
Blizzard Entertainment is seeking a highly analytical, self-driven Senior Software Engineer (Temporary) to operate at the critical intersection of high-scale platform engineering, live services optimization, and global asset delivery. In this position, you will be a core technical owner responsible for building, extending, and securing systems that directly dictate player experience, server latency, download optimization, and infrastructure costs on a global scale.
This Senior Software Engineer role requires a domain expert who is equally comfortable writing highly optimized build automation scripts, designing real-time live-ops monitoring tools, and configuring deep platform integrations between first-party Blizzard services (such as Battle.net) and third-party mobile distribution marketplaces (Apple App Store and Google Play). You will navigate an ambiguous live-service landscape with precision, setting long-term technical roadmaps and working alongside both internal engineering pods and external vendor stakeholders to elevate how we build, ship, and run our games.
Key Responsibilities as Senior Software Engineer
1. Build, Release, & CI/CD Pipeline Automation
- Pipeline Architecture: Architect, implement, and maintain highly secure, resilient build, release, and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) networks using Jenkins and related automation engines.
- Automation Strategy: Drive studio-wide automation efforts to remove manual build steps, reduce error rates, and streamline rapid-patch delivery loops for live servers.
- Workflow Integration: Standardize branch management and deployment configurations to ensure development code moves smoothly to production environments.
2. Platform Integration & Digital Distribution
- Cross-Platform Delivery: Own and polish the technical distribution pipelines across mobile storefronts (Google Play Store, Apple App Store) and PC clients (Battle.net), ensuring flawless concurrent game releases.
- Patch Optimization: Design and implement next-generation data patching, asset compression, and partial-download frameworks to minimize client footprint and accelerate time-to-gameplay for players.
- Compliance & Privacy: Audit technical configurations to ensure all integration systems align with strict international mobile platform policies, data privacy acts (GDPR/CCPA), and shifting regulatory demands.
3. Live Operations, Monitoring, & Cloud Optimization
- Dashboard Development: Engineer bespoke telemetry tools, internal live-service dashboards, and automated alert systems to enhance real-time visibility and incident response capabilities for our live operations team.
- Cloud Infrastructure Engineering: Partner with internal network teams to manage, scale, and optimize backend cloud infrastructure hosted within Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
- Cost & Performance Strategy: Conduct regular cost-benefit analyses of cloud computation and asset delivery networks, creating performance-tuning strategies that balance running costs with absolute server stability.
4. Technical Leadership & Cross-Team Synergy
- Roadmap Ownership: Define, write, and execute technical roadmaps within your engineering domain, turning high-level design or product goals into clean, well-scoped execution plans.
- Cross-Discipline Alignment: Collaborate closely with producers, community managers, security specialists, and cross-functional gameplay teams to align live-ops delivery targets with content release cadences.
- External Technical Management: Act as a core technical liaison with external engineering groups and platform partners, managing complex technical requirements across corporate borders.
Qualifications & Technical Skillsets for Senior Software Engineer
Minimum Experience & Requirements
- Professional Longevity: A minimum of 8+ years of professional software engineering experience working specifically within game development, scalable platform engineering, or enterprise live-services environments.
- Production Delivery: A proven history of owning, launching, and maintaining large-scale distributed systems or live operations infrastructures inside commercial production environments.
- Programming Fluency: Strong, production-level coding proficiency in one or more core development languages—specifically JavaScript, Python, or C#.
- Systemic Architecture: Practical familiarity with distributed systems, large-scale backend infrastructure, and network communication paradigms.
- Automation Frameworks: Hands-on experience constructing and managing enterprise-grade CI/CD pipelines and release automation engines (e.g., Jenkins).
- Cloud Literacy: Demonstrated proficiency navigating cloud computing architectures and deployment patterns within AWS or GCP.
- Ambiguity Resolution: The distinct capability to take large, ill-defined technical challenges, break them down independently into logical phases, and drive them to absolute closure.
- Tradeoff Management: A history of making smart engineering compromises, balancing the conflicting needs of runtime performance, network scalability, cloud cost efficiency, and development velocity.
Bonus Points & Desirable Assets
- Direct technical experience supporting cross-platform gameplay ecosystems that bridge mobile and PC architectures simultaneously.
- In-depth familiarity or direct code contributions to Blizzard’s native Battle.net platform integrations or equivalent first-party launcher frameworks.
- Advanced knowledge of content delivery networks (CDNs), custom file systems, binary differential patching algorithms, or high-scale asset streaming.
- A professional background working on Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) titles or top-tier live-service titles with massive concurrent player bases.
Comprehensive Benefits Portfolio
Blizzard Entertainment provides a rich suite of corporate benefits under its global “Benefits for Every World” framework, designed to support the physical, emotional, and financial health of our team members (subject to explicit eligibility and temporary contract status terms):
- Medical & Physical Well-Being: Premium medical, dental, and vision healthcare plans, along with Health Savings Accounts (HSA), Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRA), and dedicated flexible spending accounts for healthcare and dependent care.
- Financial Future & Protection: Comprehensive 401(k) retirement savings plans with a competitive corporate matching scheme, alongside robust Life, AD&D, and long-term disability insurance coverage.
- Education & Philanthropy: Full tuition reimbursement programs for approved continuous learning, paired with corporate matching for your personal charitable donations.
- Rest & Recuperation: Generous allocations of paid national holidays, accrued vacation structures, floating holidays, paid sick time, and parental leave.
- Mental Health & Lifestyle: Confidential mental health counseling programs, corporate fitness subsidies, identity protection networks, discounted legal services, and an absolute abundance of free and deeply discounted Activision Blizzard video games.
Application Materials & Submission Protocol
To formally register your candidacy for Requisition ID R027490, please provide the following technical evaluation materials:
1. An updated, professionally formatted resume highlighting your technical ownership, shipped systems, and scripting proficiencies.
2. Optional but highly valued: Direct links to public code repositories (GitHub/GitLab) or architectural case studies showcasing your live-ops tooling, automation systems, or pipeline creations.
Equal Opportunity & Accommodation Statement: Blizzard Entertainment is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are deeply committed to cultivating an inclusive workplace that welcomes talents from all backgrounds. If you are an individual with a physical or mental disability and require specific technological or scheduling accommodations to participate comfortably in our technical testing and interview pipeline, please communicate your requirements directly to accommodationrequests@activisionblizzard.com.
