Manager, Software Engineering, Core Services - VALORANT

Riot Games; Mercer Island (WA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Life insurance

Parental leave

401k with company match

Open PTO policy

Job summary

Riot Games is seeking an Engineering Manager, Services for VALORANT Core Services to lead a team responsible for the core game services powering VALORANT.

You will mentor engineers, drive performance management, and shape the technical vision while delivering reliable, scalable backend services and coordinating with Riot and Tencent teams.

This role emphasizes leadership, collaboration, and a strong focus on players' experience across regions.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience in services.
• 2+ years directly leading an engineering team.
• Experience setting technical direction and architecture.
• Proficiency in C#, Java, or Golang.
• Experience with Agile or Lean development processes.
• Experience with cloud computing and backend systems.

Responsibilities

• Manage a team of 5-10 Software Engineers across experience levels.
• Ensure VALORANT Players receive a consistently great services experience in Riot and Tencent regions.
• Serve as a hands-on engineering leader, comfortable contributing across all phases of the product lifecycle, including implementation.
• Develop a technical vision for your team, working with production and product partners to ensure consistency with overall product goals. Communicate this vision to your team clearly.
• Advocate for Players, your team, and internal development customers when deciding what to build and why. Coordinate with other teams across Riot and Tencent working on Services technology.
• Ensure high technical quality of what your team produces. Establish mechanisms to ensure your engineers have room to invent while maintaining a technical backstop for them.
• Foster a collaborative, challenging, and satisfying environment for your development team. Find and surface issues, opportunities, and address them head-on. Celebrate wins.
• Coach and develop your engineering team to grow in their roles, develop technical skills, and improve their effectiveness.
• Champion and model Riot’s values, setting the tone for your team and peers.
• Participate in your team’s on-call rotation.

Skills

Team leadership

Backend services

Cloud computing

C#

Java

Golang

Lean/Agile

Communication

Tools

Azure/AWS

Job description

Riot engineers bring deep knowledge of specific technical areas but also value the opportunity to work in many broader domains. As an Engineering Manager, you will gain organizational alignment by building a strong engineering vision and offering creative solutions to organizational design. You’ll also serve as a mentor for a team of engineers, overseeing performance management, growth opportunities, and accountability.

As a Manager, Software Engineering (Services) in VALORANT’s Core Services team, you will lead a team of engineers responsible for the core game services that power VALORANT, a global live-service game with millions of daily active players. You will lead development of new services, drive evergreen improvements to existing services, improve standards and frameworks to improve services development across VALORANT, and improve the tools and pipelines used to load test, ship, and operate those services. You will work closely with technical teams in Tencent to improve services delivery and operations in China, closing divergences in developer experience and platform behavior between Tencent and Riot regions. You will report to the Senior Manager, Software Engineering (Platform Engineering) for the VALORANT Foundations area.

Responsibilities:

• Manage a team of 5-10 Software Engineers across experience levels.
• Ensure VALORANT Players receive a consistently great services experience in Riot and Tencent regions.
• Serve as a hands-on engineering leader, comfortable contributing across all phases of the product lifecycle, including implementation.
• Develop a technical vision for your team, working with production and product partners to ensure consistency with overall product goals. Communicate this vision to your team clearly.
• Advocate for Players, your team, and internal development customers when deciding what to build and why. Coordinate with other teams across Riot and Tencent working on Services technology.
• Ensure high technical quality of what your team produces. Establish mechanisms to ensure your engineers have room to invent while maintaining a technical backstop for them.
• Foster a collaborative, challenging, and satisfying environment for your development team. Find and surface issues, opportunities, and address them head-on. Celebrate wins.
• Coach and develop your engineering team to grow in their roles, develop technical skills, and improve their effectiveness.
• Champion and model Riot’s values, setting the tone for your team and peers.
• Participate in your team’s on-call rotation.

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years professional experience as a software engineer working in services development roles.
• 2+ years experience directly leading an engineering team as an Engineering Manager.
• Professional experience driving technical direction and influencing architecture within a team.
• Expertise with C#, Java, Golang, or similar language(s).
• Professional experience with Lean or Agile development processes (Scrum, Kanban, etc).
• Professional experience working with cloud computing and cloud technologies.
• Professional experience building large-scale external customer-facing backend systems, game services, or cloud platforms.

Desired Qualifications:

• Fluent in written and spoken Mandarin Chinese and English; comfortable communicating technically in both languages.
• Professional or academic experience working with C++.

For this role, you will find success through craft expertise and a collaborative spirit, with decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. If you embody player empathy and care about the experiences of players, this could be the role for you.

Our Perks:

Riot focuses on work/life balance, with an open paid time off policy and other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner, and children, and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.

At Riot Games, we put players first. That mission drives every decision in our quest to create games and experiences that make it better to be a player. Whether you’re working directly on a new player-facing experience or you’re supporting the company as a whole, everyone at Riot is part of our mission. Our goal is to create collaborative teams where you are empowered to bring your unique perspective every day. If that sounds like the kind of place you want to work, we’re looking forward to your application.

Riot is an equal opportunity employer. Riot makes reasonable accommodations for applicants and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, handicap, veteran status, marital status, criminal history, or any other category protected by applicable federal and state law. We consider all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.