Principal Engineer - Game Innovation

What are we building? Hard Rock Digital is a team focused on becoming the best online sportsbook, casino, and social gaming company in the world. Backed by a brand known the world over for gaming, entertainment, and hospitality, we operate like a fast-moving startup with a passion for building products millions of people play. Our Games Studio is building the next generation of in-house casino content, and we are changing how that content gets made. We are building an AI-assisted development pipeline to design, build, and ship real-money games faster, and using it to go after formats the floor is not saturated with: Crash, Plinko, Mines, arcade-style games, skill-adjacent experiences, and formats that have not been invented yet. Two things at once: a new method for making all our games, and new kinds of games to make with it. What's the position? We are looking for a Principal Engineer, Game Innovation to be the technical lead for this effort. You will design and stand up the AI-assisted game development pipeline, own the architecture that takes a game from concept to a certified title live on our RGS, and build games on it yourself. You will pair with the Senior Producer, Game Innovation, who owns the product and the roadmap, while you own the technology and the build. This is a hands-on principal role, not a management track. You will write code, make the architectural calls, and set the engineering standard for how AI-built games get produced and shipped in a regulated environment. The first question, can AI build a game, is already answered by working prototypes. The harder question is whether we can build a real framework that produces games we would put in front of real players for real money. That is your problem to solve. Key Responsibilities Own the pipeline. Design and build the AI-assisted game development pipeline: a shared project with version control and CI/CD, agents that produce math, art, sound, and animation from a structured brief, automated evalu