Click here to watch James Lee discuss his new job during the Take a Break Summer Career Series

James Lee grew up playing League of Legends, which is one of the most played and watched video games in the world. Now, a decade later, the game is his job at Riot Games.

Lee, who is a 2019 alumnus of the master’s degree program through the Data Science Institute at Columbia University, interned at Riot Games during graduate school because it combined two of his favorite things: data science and video games. He excelled during the internship and was offered a full-time job as a data scientist. Essentially, he analyzes big data on League players and finds patterns from which he recommends selling discounted game products, such as the latest champion skins, to the right groups of players.

“My daily work is infused with terabytes of data, which we mine to find players with similar interests and patterns,” he said. “We use that data pipeline to build recommendation systems for certain players by finding players who are similar to them. We can then offer personalized and discounted content to our loyal players.”

Riot Games is based in Los Angeles, and Lee loves the sun and the beach and to play golf and tennis. “It happened kind of organically,” he said. “I knew I wanted to live in L.A., I love my job, and I’m living in a city where the sun shines every day. I’m happy.” Lee didn’t set out to work in the video game industry. As an undergraduate, he studied operations engineering at Cornell University. He also worked for two years at Jet.com, where he developed statistical tools and machine learning algorithms to help executives make business decisions.

But he wanted a deeper understanding of data tools, so he enrolled in the master’s degree program through DSI. Looking back, he said, it was a great decision. He had excellent courses, the content from which he uses now to do his job at Riot Games. His favorite courses were Personalization: Theory and Application with Brett Vintch, and Algorithms for Data Science with Eleni Drinea.

“I highly recommend both classes to current students,” he said. “They are tough, but excellent classes and teach you techniques that will be applicable to your work as data scientists.” 

— Robert Florida