Manager, Software Engineering, Core Services - VALORANT

The job

LIVE Live feed (private-sector employer) Source: The Muse public API · Data: listed 2026-09-04

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.

VALORANT is Riot's take on a character-based tactical shooter (for more info on VALORANT click here!). 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'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 the experiences of players, this could be the role for you!

Our Perks:

Riot focuses on work/life balance, shown by our 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. And just like in our games, we’re better when we work together. Our goal is to create collaborative teams where you are empowered to bring your unique perspective everyday. If that sounds like the kind of place you want to work, we’re looking forward to your application.

It’s our policy to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and members of Riot Games, Inc. Riot Games makes reasonable accommodations for handicapped and disabled Rioters 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 for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including the California Fair Chance Act, the City of Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, and the Washington Fair Chance Act.

Per the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, the following core duties may create a basis for disqualifying candidates with relevant criminal histories:

• Safeguarding confidential and sensitive Company data
• Communication with others, including Rioters and third parties such as vendors, and/or players, including minors
• Accessing Company assets, secure digital systems, and networks
• Ensuring a safe interactive environment for players and other Rioters

These duties are directly related to essential operations, safety, trust, and compliance obligations within our organization. Please note that job duties may evolve based on business needs and additional responsibilities may be assigned as necessary to maintain operational efficiency and security. 

Explore around this job

Field: Technology Sub-niche: Software engineering All jobs at Riot Games Jobs in California Jobs in Los Angeles, CA Los Angeles city guide California state guide Los Angeles County economy

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About the role

This is a Senior Level role in the Technology field (Software engineering) at Riot Games. Senior roles usually expect substantial experience, ownership of results and often the ability to guide others.

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How to prepare and behave

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• Read the whole description and match your examples to its requirements; use the same words the posting uses where they are true for you.
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• Arrive early (or log in early for a video call), dress one step above the daily dress code, and test your camera and audio beforehand.
• Answer with short stories: the situation, what you did and the result. Give numbers when you have them and never invent them.
• Be honest about gaps; say what you did to learn and how fast you can close them.
• Ask about the team, the first 90 days, how success is measured and the schedule; do not open with salary and time off.
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• Send a short thank-you message within a day, mentioning one thing you discussed.
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The city

The job is in Los Angeles, CA. Below is what the official statistics say about living and working there.

How Los Angeles compares. Among the 145 largest places in California, Los Angeles is #1 by population, #141 for homeownership (#1 = highest), #121 for household income (#1 = highest), #39 for rent (#1 = cheapest). Its county, Los Angeles County, is #7 of 58 counties for average pay ($83,554).

The place in numbers

Los Angeles has 3,857,263 residents (ACS 2020–2024), about 9.8% of the population of California. It covers 471 square miles of land, which works out to roughly 8,198 people per square mile. The median age is 37.2, about the same as the state median (37.2 against 37.9).

Housing

The median gross rent is $1,933 a month (rent plus utilities), 5% below the state median ($1,933 against $2,036). Over a year that is 28.3% of the median household income. US housing guidance treats housing as affordable when it takes 30% of income or less, so the typical household is under that line. The median home value is $921,200, which is 11.2 times the median household income ($81,939); a ratio above 5 usually means buying is out of reach without savings or a second income. 36.0% of households own their home, 36% below the state average (36.0% against 55.9%). A low ownership share points to a rental-heavy market with more apartments and shorter stays.

Work and pay

The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA metropolitan area has 6,271,560 jobs in the BLS wage survey, and the median pay across all occupations is $55,850 a year, 10% above the national median ($55,850 against $50,980). The biggest occupation groups are office and administrative support (702,480 jobs, median $52,710); food preparation and serving related (588,660 jobs, median $38,460); healthcare support (537,460 jobs, median $35,630). The area is most specialised in arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media (2.2 times) and healthcare support (1.7 times), where the share of workers is well above the national share. The best-paying groups with at least 5,000 jobs are management ($136,490) and legal ($128,110). In 2026M09 the unemployment rate of Los Angeles County was 4.5%. 66.4% of residents aged 16 and over are in the labour force. The city lies in Los Angeles County; its jobs, pay by industry and GDP are on the county page.

Getting around

Among workers, 59.8% drive alone, 6.1% use public transit, 3.2% walk, 19.5% work from home. 22.2% of workers commute 45 minutes or more, 14% above the state average (22.2% against 19.4%).

People and education

38.5% of adults aged 25 and over hold a bachelor's degree or higher, 4% above the state share (38.5% against 37.1%). 35.7% of residents were born outside the United States, 32% above the state share (35.7% against 27.0%). The poverty rate is 16.6%, 38% above the state rate (16.6% against 12.0%).

Climate

The warmest month is Aug, averaging 75°F (23.9°C), and the coolest is Dec at 53°F (11.8°C). About 332 mm (13 inches) of precipitation falls in a year; Feb is the wettest month (75 mm) and Jun the driest (1 mm). These values come from NASA satellite-based climatology on a grid of about 50 km, so they describe the wider area, not a weather station in the city.

Nearby cities to compare

Closest cities in this guide: Santa Monica (5 miles, rent 24% higher); Inglewood (6 miles, rent 8% lower); Hawthorne (8 miles, rent 8% lower); Burbank (13 miles, rent 13% higher). Rent differences are against Los Angeles; use the Compare tab to put any two cities side by side.

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Official links for Los Angeles

• Census Bureau data profile for Los Angeles
• Official website of Los Angeles County: lacounty.gov
• Official state website: ca.gov
• BLS Economy at a Glance: California

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Where to live

CITY Official statistics Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year (via Census Reporter) · Data: ACS 2020–2024

Places within 50 miles (straight line) of Los Angeles, CA that have a guide, with what living there costs. No pay estimate is shown because the title did not match one occupation.

Career paths

We could not match this title to one occupation, so here are the other sub-niches in Technology, where your skills may carry over:

Cybersecurity (366) Data, analytics and AI (1991) Cloud, IT and infrastructure (504) Product management (412)

Distances

CITY Calculation (straight line) Source: U.S. Census Bureau Gazetteer (coordinates) · Data: 2024

How far Los Angeles, CA is from the 20 largest US cities, in straight-line miles (not driving distance). Click a column to sort.

Nearby cities with open jobs (within 120 miles)

The employer

Riot Games is the employer in this listing. See all its open jobs here →

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What it is like to work at a company (culture, schedules, benefits) is not in the source data, so we do not describe it. Read the description and ask the questions under "How to prepare".

Other open jobs at Riot Games

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Same sub-niche: Software engineering

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FAQ

What is the Manager, Software Engineering, Core Services - VALORANT job at Riot Games?

A senior level role in technology (software engineering) listed 65 days ago. The full description is on this page and on The Muse.

Where is this job?

Los Angeles, CA.

How do I apply?

Use the "View this job and apply on The Muse" button. AtiveSite does not receive applications.

How much does it pay?

The listing does not publish pay, and we could not match the title to one official occupation.

What is the cost of living there?

Median rent in Los Angeles is $1,933 a month and median household income $81,939 (ACS 2020–2024).

How old is this listing?

It was posted on 2026-09-04 (65 days ago). Jobs older than 90 days are not shown.

Are there similar jobs?

Yes: browse software engineering jobs in California.

Sources and terms

• Job data: The Muse public API (listing dated 2026-09-04). The job disappears from this site when it disappears from the source.
• Wages and projections: BLS OEWS (May 2025) and Employment Projections 2025–35.
• City and county figures: Census Bureau ACS 2020–2024, BEA, BLS QCEW and LAUS, NASA POWER climatology; distances from Census Gazetteer coordinates.

AtiveSite is not affiliated with or endorsed by The Muse, the employer or any government agency, and does not process applications. Verify every detail with the employer before acting.

Sources

• BLS OEWS (wages and employment by occupation, May 2025)
• BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
• BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics
• BLS JOLTS
• BLS State and Metro Area Employment
• Census Bureau American Community Survey (via Census Reporter)
• BEA GDP by state and Regional Price Parities
• IRS 2026 tax adjustments
• U.S. Department of Labor, minimum wage by state
• Tax Foundation state income tax rates 2026
• USAJOBS
• USCIS
• U.S. Department of State, visas
• NASA POWER climatology
• GeoNames / Census Gazetteer (coordinates)