Senior Engineering Manager, Platform & Live Services

Riot Games; California (MO); On-site; USD 229,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Open paid time off

Medical, dental, life insurance

401k with company match

Parental leave

Job summary

Riot Games seeks a Senior Engineering Manager for the VALORANT Platform Engineering team to shape the engineering vision, mentor leaders, and ensure live service reliability across a globally distributed ecosystem.

You will lead engineers and managers across Los Angeles, Seattle, and Sydney, define strategy for core services and developer infrastructure, and partner with Riot and Tencent to improve release velocity and observability.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience building or operating large-scale backend systems, game services, or cloud platforms.
• 4+ years of engineering management experience leading engineers and engineering managers.
• Experience leading live service infrastructure, release engineering, developer platforms, or operational systems at scale.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, service reliability, deployment workflows, and operational excellence practices.
• Experience driving technical strategy and influencing architecture across multiple teams or organizations.
• Professional experience with cloud infrastructure and modern backend technologies such as Go, Java, C#, or similar.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a distributed organization of engineers and engineering managers across Los Angeles, Seattle, and Sydney.
• Define the technical and organizational strategy for VALORANT’s core services, build, release, live operations, and developer infrastructure ecosystem.
• Drive improvements to how VALORANT builds, validates, deploys, and operates Unreal game clients, dedicated servers, and backend services globally.
• Partner with Riot and Tencent engineering teams to improve reliability, release velocity, operational visibility, and developer workflows across regions.
• Establish technical direction across build infrastructure, release engineering, service orchestration, observability, and operational excellence practices.
• Influence cross-team architecture, engineering standards, and organizational decisions affecting VALORANT’s long-term scalability and live service reliability.
• Mentor engineering leaders and senior engineers while fostering a culture of ownership, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Skills

Software engineering

Engineering management

Live service infra

Distributed systems

Technical strategy

Go/Java/C#

Cloud infrastructure

Tools

Go

Java

C#

Unreal Engine

Job description

Riot Games seeks a Senior Engineering Manager for the VALORANT Platform Engineering team to shape the engineering vision, mentor leaders, and ensure live service reliability across a globally distributed ecosystem.

You will lead engineers and managers across Los Angeles, Seattle, and Sydney, define strategy for core services and developer infrastructure, and partner with Riot and Tencent to improve release velocity and observability.