Lead Anti-Cheat Client Engineer
Scopely is looking for a Lead Anti-Cheat Client Engineer on an unannounced AAA cross-platform game in Culver City on a hybrid basis or remotely in the US or Canada.
We're seeking an experienced technical leader with proven expertise in security and anti-cheat systems who can architect robust defenses against game exploits for our unannounced AAA cross-platform game. Your deep knowledge of systems programming, reverse engineering, and security principles will help us protect our player community from cheaters, ensuring fair play while you drive cross-functional initiatives that balance immediate threat mitigation with long-term security architecture.
At Scopely, we care deeply about what we do and want to inspire play, every day - whether in our work environments alongside our talented colleagues, or through our deep connections with our communities of players. We are a global team of game lovers who are developing, publishing and innovating the mobile games industry, connecting millions of people around the world daily.
What you will do:
Lead design/implementation of client-side anti-cheat modules (user) for Windows, console, and mobile.
Reverse engineer suspected cheats; build signatures, heuristics, and behavior-based detections.
Prototype and harden anti-tamper/anti-debugging techniques.
Write high-performance C/C++ code; review PRs for security, correctness, and performance.
Monitor detection pipelines and dashboards; tune thresholds, reduce false positives, and triage alerts.
Own incident response for cheat outbreaks: contain, hotfix, root-cause, and postmortem.
Create and maintain architecture diagrams and technical design docs; communicate trade-offs to stakeholders.
Mentor engineers and coordinate with QA, Ops, Legal/Compliance on releases and policies.
What we are looking for:
7+ years software engineering experience with at least 3 years in a technical lead role.
Proven experience designing, architecting, and shipping security or anti-cheat software (client-side and/or server-side) in production.
Strong systems-level programming skills in C/C++ and practical experience with at least one managed language used in game tooling (C#, Java, or equivalent).
Experience with operating system internals and drivers (Windows kernel & user-mode, and/or Linux equivalents), including secure driver development, memory/handle management, and debugging.
Demonstrable knowledge of common cheating techniques and defenses (code injection, DLL hijacking, process tampering, memory editing, packet manipulation, anti-debugging/anti-tamper techniques).
Experience with reverse engineering and binary analysis tools (e.g., IDA/Ghidra, WinDbg, Frida).
Strong understanding of secure-by-design principles, threat modelling, and secure coding practices.
Familiarity with network protocols relevant to online games and anti-cheat telemetry, and experience designing secure client-server communication.
Proven ability to define technical requirements, create system architecture diagrams, and produce technical design documents.
Experience building and operating telemetry, logging, and detection pipelines (event collection, aggregation, alerting, false-positive tuning).
Practical experience running root cause analysis and incident response for security/cheat events.
Excellent communication skills and demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally with product, QA, legal/compliance, and ops teams.
Bonus Points:
Prior experience leading an anti-cheat or game-security team, or notable contributions to a shipped anti-cheat product.
Familiarity with common game engines (Unreal, Unity) and their client architectures and plugin models.
Experience with cloud services for telemetry and analytics (AWS/GCP/Azure) and scalable data pipelines.
Background in adversarial testing, red-team/blue-team exercises, or automated cheat simulation frameworks.
Knowledge of privacy and regulatory requirements (GDPR, data minimization) as they apply to telemetry collection.
Experience hiring, mentoring, and growing engineering teams; strong interviewing and candidate evaluation skills.
Previous experience leading an engineering team.
For candidates in CA, CO, NJ, NY, and WA, the annual salary range is provided below. In addition to base pay, employees may be eligible for equity, bonuses, and a comprehensive benefits package, including healthcare benefits, retirement benefits, pet insurance, paid holidays, paid Scopely free days, and unlimited paid time off. Base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
CA, CO, NJ, NY, and WA Annual Salary Range
$169,600—$253,000 USD
About the job
Apply for this position
Lead Anti-Cheat Client Engineer
Scopely is looking for a Lead Anti-Cheat Client Engineer on an unannounced AAA cross-platform game in Culver City on a hybrid basis or remotely in the US or Canada.
We're seeking an experienced technical leader with proven expertise in security and anti-cheat systems who can architect robust defenses against game exploits for our unannounced AAA cross-platform game. Your deep knowledge of systems programming, reverse engineering, and security principles will help us protect our player community from cheaters, ensuring fair play while you drive cross-functional initiatives that balance immediate threat mitigation with long-term security architecture.
At Scopely, we care deeply about what we do and want to inspire play, every day - whether in our work environments alongside our talented colleagues, or through our deep connections with our communities of players. We are a global team of game lovers who are developing, publishing and innovating the mobile games industry, connecting millions of people around the world daily.
What you will do:
Lead design/implementation of client-side anti-cheat modules (user) for Windows, console, and mobile.
Reverse engineer suspected cheats; build signatures, heuristics, and behavior-based detections.
Prototype and harden anti-tamper/anti-debugging techniques.
Write high-performance C/C++ code; review PRs for security, correctness, and performance.
Monitor detection pipelines and dashboards; tune thresholds, reduce false positives, and triage alerts.
Own incident response for cheat outbreaks: contain, hotfix, root-cause, and postmortem.
Create and maintain architecture diagrams and technical design docs; communicate trade-offs to stakeholders.
Mentor engineers and coordinate with QA, Ops, Legal/Compliance on releases and policies.
What we are looking for:
7+ years software engineering experience with at least 3 years in a technical lead role.
Proven experience designing, architecting, and shipping security or anti-cheat software (client-side and/or server-side) in production.
Strong systems-level programming skills in C/C++ and practical experience with at least one managed language used in game tooling (C#, Java, or equivalent).
Experience with operating system internals and drivers (Windows kernel & user-mode, and/or Linux equivalents), including secure driver development, memory/handle management, and debugging.
Demonstrable knowledge of common cheating techniques and defenses (code injection, DLL hijacking, process tampering, memory editing, packet manipulation, anti-debugging/anti-tamper techniques).
Experience with reverse engineering and binary analysis tools (e.g., IDA/Ghidra, WinDbg, Frida).
Strong understanding of secure-by-design principles, threat modelling, and secure coding practices.
Familiarity with network protocols relevant to online games and anti-cheat telemetry, and experience designing secure client-server communication.
Proven ability to define technical requirements, create system architecture diagrams, and produce technical design documents.
Experience building and operating telemetry, logging, and detection pipelines (event collection, aggregation, alerting, false-positive tuning).
Practical experience running root cause analysis and incident response for security/cheat events.
Excellent communication skills and demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally with product, QA, legal/compliance, and ops teams.
Bonus Points:
Prior experience leading an anti-cheat or game-security team, or notable contributions to a shipped anti-cheat product.
Familiarity with common game engines (Unreal, Unity) and their client architectures and plugin models.
Experience with cloud services for telemetry and analytics (AWS/GCP/Azure) and scalable data pipelines.
Background in adversarial testing, red-team/blue-team exercises, or automated cheat simulation frameworks.
Knowledge of privacy and regulatory requirements (GDPR, data minimization) as they apply to telemetry collection.
Experience hiring, mentoring, and growing engineering teams; strong interviewing and candidate evaluation skills.
Previous experience leading an engineering team.
For candidates in CA, CO, NJ, NY, and WA, the annual salary range is provided below. In addition to base pay, employees may be eligible for equity, bonuses, and a comprehensive benefits package, including healthcare benefits, retirement benefits, pet insurance, paid holidays, paid Scopely free days, and unlimited paid time off. Base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
CA, CO, NJ, NY, and WA Annual Salary Range
$169,600—$253,000 USD