Hey folks! We’re Mark Hillick, Jason Clark, and David Rook from the Riot Security team and we’re here to discuss how the security program at Riot has evolved over the last 4 years. This is our first article in a series of security articles so it’ll be more high-level, but keep an eye on the tech blog in the future for all the juicy techy bits.

In my last two articles, I introduced Masteries - our framework for clarifying career progression within Riot Engineering. I covered the design of the system and how we arrived at version 1.0. In this article, I’ll discuss the rollout, lessons learned, and our plans for the future of Masteries.

In my last article, we discussed a problem with titles: they poorly describe the many ways an engineer can develop their career. In response, we developed a system we call Masteries comprised of six attributes that, when combined, create a more well-rounded perspective on an engineer’s capabilities and growth path. In this second article, we’ll explore how we designed the levels and attributes, including the “minimum bar” we expect for engineers at Riot.

What makes a Senior Engineer a Senior Engineer? When you ask that question, you’ll get a lot of different answers. Some think it’s writing excellent code. Some think it involves leadership. Others believe it requires the ability to mentor others or be product-minded. As we’ll discuss later in the article, everyone is probably right. But if everyone is right, the path to Senior Engineer is murky and unclear, not to mention really hard. How do I become an amazing programmer, and an amazing leader, and an amazing mentor, and more?