Principal Engineer - Game Innovation

Hard Rock Digital

6d•Hybrid

About The Position

Hard Rock Digital is building the next generation of in-house casino content using an AI-assisted development pipeline to design, build, and ship real-money games faster. This role will be the technical lead for this effort, designing and standing up the AI-assisted game development pipeline, owning the architecture from concept to a certified title, and building games on it. The focus is on creating a framework that produces games for real players and real money, not just infrastructure.

Requirements

10+ years in software engineering, with significant time building games.
Director-level or principal-level scope as an individual contributor, comfortable operating without a team reporting to them.
Shipped real-money casino games.
Direct experience with game clients and game servers, math and paytable implementation, RNG integration, and the certification process (GLI, BMM, or equivalent) in regulated US or European markets.
Deep game development experience across the stack: a modern engine or framework for the client (e.g., Phaser, Godot, Unity, Cocos, or PixiJS) and server-side services holding game logic and outcomes.
Hands-on, demonstrated expertise using AI-assisted development tools and agents as a core part of building software.
A track record of defining conventions, guardrails, and workflows that a team adopts, ideally applied to game development.
Real enthusiasm for AI in game production, with a point of view on its capabilities, limitations, and verification methods.
Experience standing up development infrastructure: version control strategy, CI/CD, containerized environments, artifact management, observability, and reproducible builds.
Understanding of RGS and RNG integration, wallet operations, and reporting/audit requirements for real-money play.
A track record of shipping multiple titles or platform releases personally driven to live.
Comfort in a regulated industry, able to work within compliance requirements while pushing boundaries and minimizing architectural costs of jurisdiction-specific rules.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, capable of writing technical specs, arguing architecture, and explaining decisions to non-technical stakeholders.
Low ego, high ownership, self-unblocking, and effective pairing with product.

Nice To Haves

Bonus points if you have built a game with AI on your own time.

Responsibilities

Own the pipeline: Design and build the AI-assisted game development pipeline, including version control, CI/CD, AI agents for math, art, sound, and animation, automated evaluation gates, and playable builds.
Make the pipeline repeatable for faster game development.
Own the architecture for the game client and back-end game server, covering round lifecycle, bet validation, outcome mapping against a certified RNG, wallet operations, reconciliation, RTP reporting, and audit trails.
Keep math and money server-side.
Lead the integration with Fingenuity (RGS and RNG) and manage the process for turning a candidate build into a certifiable, shippable title across jurisdictions.
Stay hands-on by prototyping mechanics, building game clients and servers, and shipping real titles through the pipeline.
Set the AI engineering standard, defining conventions, guardrails, human review gates, and automated checks for AI output.
Make build, buy, and partner decisions on engine, tooling, and infrastructure, standardizing choices for AI-assisted development.
Partner with platform engineering, compliance, RGS, and third-party partners.
Collaborate with math, art, and production talent to maintain high quality and speed.
Mentor engineers, establish code review culture, and document patterns to ensure the pipeline's longevity.