Gaming Recruiters for both sides of the word
Technical hires for game studios, casino operators, slot makers and iGaming platforms, screened for how each one ships.
Software developers · BLS median pay, May 2025Studio $164,550vsCasino $164,960A draw, and the only one. Every other technical seat goes to the studio side.
KORE1 gaming recruiters fill the technical seats around the game for video game studios, casino operators, gaming-device makers and iGaming and sportsbook platforms, including live-service backend, data, QA and certification, security, and engineering leadership.
Last updated: October 10, 2026
- This page
- Gaming companies hiring the engineers, analysts and leaders who keep a game live, paid for and legal, on either side of the word.
- Not this page
- Unity, Unreal, gameplay, graphics and netcode engineers have their own desk at game developer staffing. IT seats around a single Las Vegas property sit with Las Vegas IT staffing.
Say gaming to a studio head in Irvine and they hear Unreal builds and season passes. Say it to a CTO in Las Vegas and they hear slot floors, GLI lab submissions and a sportsbook that can’t go down on a Sunday. Both are right. More than 212 million Americans play video games every week according to the Entertainment Software Association’s 2026 report, and commercial casino gaming booked more than $78 billion in 2025, its sixth straight record in the American Gaming Association’s State of the States 2026.
Those two industries used to hire from separate pools. Not anymore. A live-ops engineer who kept a free-to-play title up through a holiday event is who an online casino in New Jersey wants on its platform, and a sportsbook fraud analyst reads player behavior the way a studio’s trust and safety lead does. KORE1’s gaming desk sits inside our IT recruiters practice, has placed technology talent since 2005, and works both sides with one rule. Screen for how the employer ships.
What Gaming Recruiters See When One Engineer Is Priced Two Ways
Same occupation, two industries, Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data for May 2025. On the left, software publishers, where BLS counts video game publishers. On the right, gambling industries. Every bar is drawn to one scale, and the longest is $202,250.
Studio sideSoftware publishers · NAICS 5132
Casino sideGambling industries · NAICS 7132
- Software developers Studio$164,550173,080 employed Casino$164,9601,010 employed Draw · casino by $410
- Information security analysts Studio$144,9704,830 employed Casino$129,920120 employed Studio by $15,050
- Data scientists Studio$156,22010,950 employed Casino$105,210260 employed Studio by $51,010
- QA analysts and testers Studio$101,07016,710 employed Casino$98,580200 employed Studio by $2,490
- Computer systems analysts Studio$110,19011,630 employed Casino$81,070170 employed Studio by $29,120
- Network and systems administrators Studio$103,0704,740 employed Casino$81,960480 employed Studio by $21,110
- Computer and information systems managers Studio$202,25035,120 employed Casino$147,230650 employed Studio by $55,020
Studio 6 · Casino 0 · Draw 1171 software developers on the studio side for every 1 on the casino side
Reading the screen
- Solid bar. Studio side, software publishers.
- Striped bar. Casino side, gambling industries.
- Draw. Medians within 1% of each other. One row.
- Employed. How many people BLS counts in that seat on that side.
The regulated side pays full price for exactly one seat, and it’s the one with 1,010 people in it.
Look at the developer row first. A gambling-industry employer pays a median $164,960 for a software developer, $410 more than a software publisher and $28,980 above the $135,980 median across every industry. That’s a pay decision, not an accident. BLS counts 1,010 software developers in gambling industries nationwide against 173,080 at software publishers, so a casino or iGaming operator that wants a senior engineer has to hire one away from somewhere else, and studios and fintech are where they come from.
Then the rest of the screen goes to the studio side. Data scientists, $51,010 apart. Systems managers, $55,020. Systems analysts, $29,120. For a sportsbook trying to lure a studio data scientist, that gap is the whole negotiation, and the offer has to close it in cash, title or a remote arrangement the studio won’t match.
It cuts the other way too. A studio hiring QA, admins or analysts out of the regulated side is often buying people who already work under change control, audit logs and a lab that rejects sloppy builds. They tend to cost less than the studio’s own band, and they come with habits most studios spend a year trying to teach.
Regulated Gaming Ships Through a Lab and a License
A slot title doesn’t go live when the build is green. It goes to a test lab first. Gaming Laboratories International publishes the standards most U.S. regulators test against, GLI-11 for gaming devices, GLI-19 for interactive gaming systems, GLI-33 for event wagering and GLI-16 for cashless systems, and a state commission signs off after the lab does.
The people need sign-off too. Nevada’s statute, NRS 463.0157, counts as gaming employees anyone directly involved in making, repairing, selling or distributing gaming devices or interactive gaming systems, plus IT staff with operational or supervisory control over gaming systems, and NRS 463.335 requires each one to register with the Gaming Control Board. Your new platform engineer may be hired on a Monday and unable to touch production until the registration clears.
So on this side, three things get screened before the technical panel.
- Can this person be licensed where you operate?Asked at intake, never at offer. Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan each run their own process, and a candidate who has worked a regulated floor already knows what the background check covers.
- Have they shipped under change control?A GLI submission freezes the build. Engineers who’ve lived with that write different commit messages, and you can hear it in the first ten minutes.
- Real money, real timeOn iGaming and sportsbook seats that means geolocation, KYC, payments and the uptime that a Sunday NFL slate demands. Online casinos made more than $10 billion across seven states in 2025, per the AGA, and none of it could wait for a maintenance window.
Hiring IT around a single resort rather than for a gaming product? The hospitality IT staffing desk and our Las Vegas engineering staffing team cover that build.
Studios Ship Through a Platform Holder and a Live Calendar
On a console title the lab is Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo. Each platform holder keeps its own certification requirement list, and a submission that fails one item goes back in the queue while the launch date doesn’t move. Mobile goes through Apple’s and Google’s store review instead, faster and stricter about payments.
Then the game launches and the real work starts. A live-service title runs on a calendar of seasons, events and patches, and the backend has to survive every one of them with the same team. That’s why the studio seats we’re asked for most aren’t engine seats at all.
- Live-ops and game servicesMatchmaking, inventory, entitlements, store and event services on AWS, Azure or GCP, with on-call that means it. Closer to an SRE search than a gameplay one.
- QA that knows the cert listA tester who has seen a submission bounce is worth two who haven’t. Compliance QA, localization QA and automation are three different hires, and a studio usually needs at least two.
- Player data and monetizationTelemetry pipelines, economy and LTV analysts, experimentation. The same skills a sportsbook prices risk with, at $51,010 more in median pay.
Supply helps right now. Layoffs at Epic Games and the Roblox platform engineering cuts put senior live-service people on the market who would have ignored a recruiter in 2021, and plenty of them are open to the casino side for the first time. For the engine seats themselves, start from our game developer job description template and the interview questions we use for game developers.
212M+
Americans who play video games every week, ESA 2026
$10B+
online casino revenue in 2025, from seven legal states, AGA
17
days, on average, for KORE1 to fill an IT search
92%
of our placements still in seat twelve months on
Player count from the Entertainment Software Association’s 2026 Essential Facts release, June 3, 2026. Online casino revenue from the American Gaming Association’s State of the States 2026. Fill time and retention from KORE1’s placement data.
Four Seats Our Gaming Recruiters Fill on Both Sides
Same four seats at a studio in Bellevue and an iGaming operator in Philadelphia. The job descriptions read differently. The people overlap more than either employer expects.
Keeps it up
Live-service and platform engineers
Backend, game services and reliability for titles and casino platforms that can’t take a Friday-night outage.
Reads the players
Data, analytics and monetization
Telemetry, LTV and economy analysts, plus sportsbook and iGaming data teams pricing risk in real time.
Gets it through the gate
QA, certification and compliance
Testers who know a platform holder’s cert list, and engineers who’ve walked a build through a GLI submission.
Protects the money
Security, fraud and trust and safety
Anti-cheat, account takeover, bonus abuse and payments fraud. The same attacker works both sides.
Leadership searches for a VP of engineering, a CTO or a chief information security officer at a gaming company run through our executive recruiters, with the CTO recruiting team on the technical seats. Most individual-contributor hires go direct hire. Launch surges, cert crunches and season drops are usually contract staffing for three to nine months.
How Our Gaming Recruiters Run a Search
The order doesn’t change between a mobile studio and a slot maker. What gets asked at each step does.
- Intake, starting with the gateWhich side, which release gate, which states you’re licensed in, and whether the seat touches a regulated system. Then comp, checked against the BLS medians above rather than last year’s offer letter.
- Shortlist in three to five daysCandidates already screened for the gate. A studio gets people who’ve shipped through platform cert or run a live calendar. A casino or iGaming operator gets people who can register where it operates.
- Technical panel, then the side-specific screenAn engineer on our panel runs the technical round. The second conversation covers change control, uptime under load, and how the candidate handled a fraud or cheating spike they didn’t see coming.
- Offer, registration and day ninetyRegistration timing goes into the start date, not into an awkward second week. We check in through the first ninety days, which is a large part of why 92% of our placements are still there at twelve months.
Our IT searches have averaged 17 days from intake to accepted offer. Seats that need a licensable candidate in a single state run longer, because the pool is smaller, and we’ll say so on the first call rather than in week five. For role-level detail, our guides on hiring a QA engineer, hiring a data scientist and hiring a DevOps engineer cover the screens in depth.
Common Questions
What do gaming recruiters actually do?
Gaming recruiters find and screen hires for companies that make or run games, which on KORE1’s desk means video game studios and platforms plus casino operators, slot makers and iGaming and sportsbook companies. The part that separates a gaming recruiter from a generalist is knowing how the employer ships. Platform certification, a GLI lab and a state license each change who’s qualified, so the screen changes with them.
How much do tech jobs in the gaming industry pay?
$164,550 is the May 2025 BLS median for software developers at software publishers, where game publishers are counted, and gambling industries pay $164,960. Below the developer seat the sides split. Data scientists are $51,010 apart and systems managers $55,020, both in the studio side’s favor.
Do casino and iGaming tech hires need a gaming license?
Often, yes. Nevada counts people who build, repair or distribute gaming devices and interactive gaming systems, plus IT staff with operational control over gaming systems, as gaming employees who must register with the Gaming Control Board. Other states run their own rules, so we check the seat against each state you operate in at intake. Your gaming counsel has the final word on who needs what.
Can a video game developer move into casino or iGaming tech?
Yes, for most backend, data and QA work. Live-service engineers already run real-time systems with payments and abuse problems, which is most of an iGaming platform. The adjustment is change control and licensing, and the developer row of the BLS data shows the casino side will pay to close it.
How long does it take to fill a gaming role?
17 days is KORE1’s average from intake to accepted offer across IT searches. Senior data, security and licensable single-state seats run longer because the pool is smaller. Registration on the casino side adds time to the start date rather than the search.
Should we use a games-only recruiting firm or a tech recruiting firm?
Depends on the seat. For an Unreal lead or a combat designer, deep game-industry networks win. For backend, data, QA, security and leadership, the best candidate frequently works outside games today, at a fintech, a streaming company or a sportsbook, and a tech recruiting firm with a gaming desk sees both pools.
Tell Us Which Side of Gaming You’re Hiring For
Studio or casino, the gate your release goes through, and the states you’re licensed in. We’ll come back with a shortlist plan and a comp read against current BLS data.
Start a Gaming Search →Or call 949-706-6990
