Manager, Software Engineering, Services & China Partnership - VALORANT

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

VALORANT is Riot’s take on a character-based tactical shooter (for more info on VALORANT click here!).

As a Manager, Software Engineering on the VALORANT team, in addition to working in the code, you’ll guide engineers on the team to grow in their careers and help the overall team meet its product and technical goals. As a leader on our Core Services team, you will lead a team of engineers in improving how VALORANT builds, delivers and operates its global services platform. You will lead the development of new services, drive evergreen improvements to existing services, create standards and frameworks to improve services development across VALORANT, and improve the tools and pipelines used to 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 of Engineering for VALORANT in Sydney.

This is a full-time role, based in Sydney, Australia.

Responsibilities:

• Manage an engineering team, ensuring good practices are maintained, and collaboration is fostered between disciplines and other teams to deliver a consistently high quality experience to players.
• Serve as a hands-on engineering leader, actively contributing across all phases of the product lifecycle, including implementation.
• Participate in discussions about our product vision and ensure that vision is clear to your engineers and their respective teams.
• Guide the technical design, development and operation of services, ensuring long-term maintainability and scalability.
• Break down multi-month projects into smaller projects and tasks.
• Implement and champion engineering standards to ensure high quality code.
• Coach more junior engineers through code reviews and 1-on-1 feedback.
• Troubleshoot live service issues as part of an on-call rotation.
• Mentor engineers identifying stretch opportunities for them to grow. 
• Manage the health and performance of the engineering team with empathy and authenticity, building trust, and inspiring them to overcome challenges. 
• Seek different perspectives to solve problems, encouraging engineers and others to contribute ideas. Base your decisions on sound analysis and avoid biases.

Required Qualifications: 

• 2+ years of experience directly leading a software delivery team either as an Engineering Manager or Technical Lead & mentor.
• 5+ years of experience as a hands-on software engineer working in service development.
• Fluent in written and spoken Mandarin Chinese and English; comfortable communicating technically in both languages.
• Expertise with C#, Java, Golang, or similar language(s).
• Experience collaborating across departments and disciplines to create solutions.
• Experience working in an agile environment.

Desired Qualifications:

Ideal candidates will have broad experience which covers 1 or more of the following:

• Professional experience building large-scale, high-performance backend systems or game services.
• Experience working with C++.
• Professional or hobby experience working with Unreal Engine.
• Professional experience working with cloud computing and cloud technologies.
• Experience delivering complex features in a live game or product.
• Experience working in a distributed environment across time zones and cultures.

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. We will be looking at your past studies, experience, and your personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players' experiences, this could be your role!&