Manager, Software Engineering - Legends of Runeterra

Riot engineers bring deep knowledge of specific technical areas but also value the chance to work in multiple broader domains. As an Engineering Manager on Legends of Runeterra, you will be involved in a broad range of technology and organizational challenges. You will work together with other disciplines in delivering an end-to-end, live, game-as-a-service, Collectible Card Game (CCG) on PC and Mobile experience to players. 

As a Manager, Software Engineering on the Legends of Runeterra Sydney team, you will offer technical leadership, career guidance, and help lead the delivery of new features on our live, game-as-a-service Collectible Card Game (CCG) on PC and Mobile through both hands on contributions and leading engineers. You’ll also serve as a mentor and coach for engineers, overseeing performance management, growth opportunities, and accountability. You will report to the Sr Manager, Software Engineering Manager of the Initiative and partner closely with the Engineering Lead of Legends of Runeterra.

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

On this team, you will be:

• Player-Focused: You have strong player empathy, and you want to find solutions that make players excited to experience our game. 
• A Collaborator: You want to work elbow-to-elbow with members of other disciplines (such as Art or Game Design) to build a whole experience. You are excited to see problems from a different point of view, and make hard tradeoffs to meet multiple goals.
• An Optimizer; Tuning is in your heart: Inefficiency bothers you and you work to create well-oiled machines whenever you can.
• Adaptable: You understand and are comfortable with switching gears between optimization, break/fix, development, and understand the need for rapid re-prioritization.
• Inclusive: You resist siloing yourself, you seek input, feedback and ask a lot of questions whenever you can to build understanding and empathy for others.

• You will be both Technology Leader and People Manager for a group of 2-5 engineers.
• Managing an engineering team developing player facing features, ensuring good practices are maintained, and collaboration is fostered between disciplines and other teams to constantly deliver value to players.
• Participate in discussions about our product vision and ensure that vision is clear to your engineers and their respective teams.
• Lead the team with a positive and productive tone. It’s up to you to surface issues, opportunities, wins, and address them head-on.
• Help your team grow. What role is next for them? How can we help them to get there? We will hold them accountable for getting there while providing mentorship, coaching, and support.
• Own delivery of player-facing features on a monthly cadence, collaborating across disciplines (design, QA, art) and engineering leads in partner offices.
• Guide technical design of client and backend features, ensuring long-term maintainability and scalability.
• Breaking down multi-month projects into smaller projects and tasks.
• Implementing and championing engineering standards to ensure high quality code.
• Coaching more junior engineers through code reviews and 1-on-1 feedback.
• Troubleshoot live service issues as part of an on-call rotation.

• 4+ years experience managing development teams. 
• 6+ years software development experience, including at least 2 years building backend services, game client features, or both.
• 3+ years experience with compiled object oriented languages (C++, Java, C#, etc.)
• Proven track record of leading teams delivering complex features in a live game or product environment.
• Experience building effective collaboration within and across development teams.
• Experience mentoring team members to level up their technical capabilities
• Experience breaking down and leading execution of multi-month work efforts in scope collaborating with team leadership. This regularly includes collaboration across disciplines and other teams of engineers.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience

• Working and maintaining great relationships with external development partners.
• Full-stack development experience, comfortable working with client and services code to create responsive real-time systems, able to guide engineers working across both domains.
• Professional experience leading development of games preferably in Unity.
• Experience developing high-performance containerized microservices at global scale.
• Familiarity with SQL, relational databases, caching systems (e.g. Redis), and pub/sub systems (e.g. Kafka, HornetQ, RabbitMQ, etc.).
• Development experience with AWS or other cloud platforms.
• Proficiency with Agile/Scrum and understanding of its value to work processes.

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!

At Riot we strongly believe in work / life balance, and we encourage that with our open paid time off policy, paid parental leave (for both primary and secondary carers) and flexible work schedules to fit your lifestyle. We also believe that work should be fun, we have co-op gaming areas, a play fund so you can broaden and deepen your knowledge of players and community, and all the snacks you would ever need to power through your day (even healthy snacks!). And that’s not all we offer, there’s also:

• Medical Insurance that covers you and your dependents
• Employee Assistance Program
• Wellness fund
• Donation matching of time and money to registered charities
• Learning and Development opportunities

Riot Games fosters a player and workplace experience that values teamwork embodied by the Summoner's Code and Community Code. Our culture embraces differences as a strength, and our values are the guiding principles for how we approach work. We are committed to putting diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the center of everything we do, and promoting a fair and collaborative culture where Rioters treat one another with dignity and respect. We encourage you to read more about our value of thriving together and our ongoing work to build the most inclusive company in Gaming.