Manager, Software Engineering, Core Services - VALORANT

About the role

As an Engineering Manager 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 gain organizational alignment by building a strong engineering vision and offering creative solutions to organizational design, while also serving as a mentor for your team.

You will lead development of new services, drive evergreen improvements to existing services, improve standards and frameworks to enhance services development across VALORANT, and refine the tools and pipelines used to load test, ship, and operate those services. Additionally, 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, contributing across all phases of the product lifecycle, including implementation.
• Develop a technical vision for your team, aligning with production and product partners to ensure consistency with overall product goals, and communicate this vision 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 your team’s output by establishing mechanisms that allow engineers room to innovate while maintaining a technical backstop.
• Foster a collaborative, challenging, and satisfying environment for your development team; surface and address issues and opportunities proactively, and celebrate wins.
• Coach and develop your engineering team to grow in their roles, enhance technical skills, and improve effectiveness.
• Champion and model Riot’s values, setting the tone for your team and peers.
• Participate in your team’s on-call rotation.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional experience as a software engineer in services development roles.
• 2+ years of 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.

Qualifications

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

Success in this role requires craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. We consider your past studies, experience, and personal relationship with games, particularly if you embody player empathy and care about player experiences.

Benefits

• Open paid time off policy and flexible work schedules.
• Medical, dental, and life insurance.
• Parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner, and children.
• 401k with company match.