Manager, Software Engineering, Publishing Engagement - Publishing Platform (based in Seoul, South Korea)

Riot Games was established in 2006 by entrepreneurial gamers who believe that player-focused game development can result in great games. In 2009, Riot released its debut title League of Legends to critical and player acclaim. As the most played video game in the world, over 100 million play every month. Players form the foundation of our community and it’s for them that we continue to evolve and improve the League of Legends experience.

We’re looking for humble but ambitious, razor-sharp professionals who can teach us a thing or two. We promise to return the favor. Like us, you take play seriously; you’re passionate about games. We embrace those who see things differently, aren’t afraid to experiment, and who have a healthy disregard for constraints.

That's where you come in.

Riot Engineers bring deep expertise in specific technical areas while embracing opportunities to work across broader domains. As a Manager, Software Engineering, you’ll lead from the front - working alongside your team through every phase of the software development and operations lifecycle. You’ll combine hands-on technical leadership with mentorship and coaching to drive both team growth and product excellence.

As the Manager, Software Engineering,  in the Publishing Platform’s Publishing Engagement team, you’ll lead the engineers who design, build, and operate platform services that enable game content delivery and power player-facing experiences across and beyond games. You’ll partner with game developers across Riot, central technology groups, and legal and business teams in Korea to make smart decisions, maintain a high quality bar, and operate efficiently in service of players in Korea and around the world.

Your deep understanding of technical systems and engineering workflows will help shape how the team builds, operates, and scales our services. You’ll participate in key technical decisions, guide documentation and process improvements, and coach engineers to deliver cohesive, multi-platform experiences that power all of Riot’s games. Your leadership will enable the team to operate with clarity, discipline, and agility - staying aligned and delivering lasting impact for players.

You will report to the Sr Manager, Software Engineering,  who oversees multiple teams under the Meta Game Services initiative.

Responsibilities:

• Team Leadership & People Management
• Manage a team of 4-5 Software Engineers; coach, mentor, and support their growth while driving strong performance and positive results
• Own the interviewing and onboarding process for new engineering team members
• Build healthy relationships with engineering/QA teams across Riot globally to foster collaboration and shared learning
• Technical Leadership & Hands-on Involvement
• Stay hands-on with the team’s technology, overseeing technical design and deliverables in partnership with the team’s technical leadership
• Engage regularly with the codebase through reviews and non-critical contributions to stay close to the team’s work
• Drive the technical vision and roadmap by collaborating closely with engineers - contributing to design reviews, aligning priorities, and ensuring the right people and skills are in place to deliver results
• Maintain accountability for the technical health and long-term sustainability of the team’s products
• Execution & Cross-functional Collaboration
• Lead the breakdown and execution of multi-month projects, partnering across disciplines and other engineering teams to deliver impactful outcomes
• Collaborate with Product Leads, Delivery Leads, and Engineering/QA Leads within the team and across Meta Game Services and Publishing Platform to align on execution plans and priorities
• Align with service teams within Meta Game Services and across the Publishing Platform organization to drive consistency in tech standards, tooling, and best practices

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent professional experience
• 5+ years experience as a Software Engineer, including hands-on experience delivering live or shipped web applications
• 2+ years experience directly leading an engineering team either as an Engineering Manager or Technical Lead
• Deep front-end expertise with TypeScript/Javascript, React, CSS-in-JS, and modern frameworks like Next.js
• Extensive back-end experience with Java and Spring Boot, combined with strong fundamentals in software engineering (data structures, algorithms, concurrency, OOP) and experience designing scalable systems using RESTful APIs, event-driven microservices, and modern web architecture patterns
• Proven track record of improving engineering discipline - driving better documentation, thoughtful tech design processes, and structured proposals for technical improvements, with a strong understanding of the full product lifecycle from design to deployment and operations, and the ability to apply MVP principles effectively
• Able to clearly communicate technical concepts and decisions across disciplines, helping align engineers, designers, and product managers
• Experience managing engineers and actively participating in their growth and development
• Experience recruiting candidates and growing an engineering team
• Experience with distributed systems, microservices, and software at a high scale
• Experience operating and maintaining live services, including handling emergent issues and on-call troubleshooting
• Fluency in Korean and professional working proficiency in English, as the position involves being based in Seoul while engaging with global teams across Riot

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience developing using cloud infrastructure (such as AWS, GCP), using containers and orchestration (such as Docker, Kubernetes), managed using infrastructure as code (such as Terraform)
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Netlify)
• Experience with relational databases (such as MySQL)
• Experience with event driven architectures and technologies (such as Kafka)

Don’t forget to include a resume and cover letter. We receive a lot of applications, but we’ll notice a fun, well-written intro that shows us you take play seriously.