Senior Data Scientist

WHAT MAKES US EPIC?

At the core of Epic’s success are talented, passionate people. Epic prides itself on creating a collaborative, welcoming, and creative environment. Whether it’s building award-winning games or crafting engine technology that enables others to make visually stunning interactive experiences, we’re always innovating.

Being Epic means being a part of a team that continually strives to do right by our community and users. We’re constantly innovating to raise the bar of engine and game development.

ANALYTICS

What We Do

Our Data & Analytics teams build powerful stories and visuals that inform the games we make, the technology we develop, and business decisions that drive Epic.

What You'll Do

As a Senior Data Scientist on the Player Personalization ML team, you’ll play a key role in shaping how players experience the game. You'll work closely with ML engineers, software engineers, product managers, and analysts to help build and evaluate a player foundation model that powers personalized in-game experiences, so that every player’s journey through the Fortnite ecosystem feels more relevant, responsive, and fun. You will focus on iterating on models, running experiments, and refining recommendations that respond to player behavior as it evolves, moment to moment or throughout long-term play. You’ll guide how we measure success, decide when models are ready for promotion, and ensure we make evidence-based decisions at every stage.

In this role, you will:

• Develop and refine personalization models to surface the most engaging and relevant Fortnite islands to players, helping shape what millions of players see and play each day.
• Help design and interpret experiments (using tools like Statsig) to evaluate the impact of models, not just on click-through or retention, but on broader goals such as ecosystem health and player satisfaction.
• Work closely with product managers and analysts to prioritize the most valuable modeling opportunities and ensure personalization aligns with player and business goals.
• Build metrics and evaluation strategies beyond standard A/B tests, including model-specific diagnostics, funnel tracking, and ecosystem-aware assessments.
• Partner with engineering and ML teammates on model development, helping iterate on specific modules or scripts while contributing to a shared long-term modeling vision.
• Play a key role in shaping how new content (e.g., islands) is evaluated, promoted, or demoted within the discovery funnel, ensuring promising content gets surfaced fairly and quickly.
• Contribute to the long-term evolution of Fortnite's player foundation model, helping build toward a personalization system that learns from every player interaction and adapts meaningfully over time.

What We’re Looking For

• Proven experience applying machine learning or data science in a product environment, ideally with exposure to personalization, recommendations, or content ranking at scale.
• Comfortable programming in Python (more specifically PySpark) or an equivalent language suited to working with large-scale behavioral data, and experienced in contributing to production workflows with version control and code reviews. You should be confident working beyond SQL to build, debug, and iterate on modeling pipelines.
• Exposure to deep learning concepts and understanding how they apply to personalization or recommendation systems. Experience with sequence modeling or representation learning is a plus, but not required.
• Experience designing or interpreting experiments using tools like Statsig, and an ability to go beyond surface metrics to ask the right product and modeling questions.
• Ability to collaborate with product managers and analysts to frame modeling opportunities, and with engineers to shape how models are developed, deployed, and monitored.
• Familiarity with job orchestration tools like Airflow and understanding how models fit into broader ML workflows.
• Comfortable working with raw telemetry and designing event-level instrumentation to support modeling and experimentation needs.

Bonus:

• Experience working on recommendation systems in gaming, e-commerce, ads, or social platforms.
• Passion for games, creators, or player ecosystems, or a strong interest in how people find meaningful content in complex systems.

EPIC JOB + EPIC BENEFITS = EPIC LIFE

Our intent is to cover all things that are medically necessary and improve the quality of life. We pay 100% of the premiums for both you and your dependents. Our coverage includes Medical, Dental, a Vision HRA, Long Term Disability, Life Insurance & a 401k with competitive match. We also offer a robust mental well-being program through Modern Health, which provides free therapy and coaching for employees & dependents. Throughout the year we celebrate our employees with events and company-wide paid breaks. We offer unlimited PTO and sick time and recognize individuals for 7 years of employment with a paid sabbatical.

ABOUT US

Epic Games spans across 25 countries with 46 studios and 4,500+ employees globally. For over 25 years, we've been making award-winning games and engine technology that empowers others to make visually stunning games and 3D content that bring environments to life like never before. Epic's award-winning Unreal Engine technology not only provides game developers the ability to build high-fidelity, interactive experiences for PC, console, mobile, and VR, it is also a tool being embraced by content creators across a variety of industries such as media and entertainment, automotive, and architectural design. As we continue to build our Engine technology and develop remarkable games, we strive to build teams of world-class talent.

Like what you hear? Come be a part of something Epic!

Epic Games deeply values diverse teams and an inclusive work culture, and we are proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. Learn more about our Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Policy here.

Note to Recruitment Agencies: Epic does not accept any unsolicited resumes or approaches from any unauthorized third party (including recruitment or placement agencies) (i.e., a third party with whom we do not have a negotiated and validly executed agreement). We will not pay any fees to any unauthorized third party. Further details on these matters can be found here.