Sr. Manager, Software Engineering, ML Platform - Game Tech Group

Riot engineers bring deep knowledge of specific technical areas but also value the opportunity to work in a variety of broader domains. As Engineering Managers, we gain organizational alignment by building a strong engineering vision and offering creative solutions to organizational design. We also serve as mentors for a team of engineers, overseeing their performance and trying to find stretch opportunities for their growth

As the founding Sr. Manager, Software Engineering on the ML Platform team, you’ll blend technical execution with product-minded leadership—building a high-performing team, aligning stakeholders and consumers, architecting a clear roadmap, and delivering best in class ML platform milestones along the needs of real-world users across Riot’s games and services. You’ll guide the development of core infrastructure for global ML inference at scale on both GPU and CPU, model deployment, observability, live testing (A/B and shadow deployments), and model versioning—delivering a platform that is robust, cost-efficient, and extensible for Riot’s present and future needs. Your team’s work will directly enable high-impact ML use cases across Riot’s games and internal products for players around the world. You will report to the Director of Data Science on the team.

Responsibilities:

 

• Build and lead a new ML Platform team from the ground up—recruiting, mentoring, and growing both ICs and future leads.
• Set the cultural and operational foundations for a sustainable, inclusive, and high-performing engineering team.
• Collaborate technical leadership (including Riot, AI Foundations, and the ML Platform P5 Principal Engineer) to ensure architectural decisions are grounded in Riot’s long-term needs.
• Drive the team’s roadmap and execution—balancing foundational investments with fast, iterative delivery of user-visible platform capabilities.
• Align closely with data scientists, ML engineers, and game product teams to deeply understand workflows, pain points, and infrastructure needs.
• Champion developer experience, designing for usability and self-service adoption from day one.
• Own the delivery of the ML Platform’s early feature set: scalable inference serving, model artifact CI/CD, versioning, testing environments (A/B, shadow), and observability.
• Coordinate cross-team dependencies and build strong partnerships with platform engineering, SRE, security, and product stakeholders.
• Ensure the platform meets critical non-functional goals such as cost-efficiency, operational reliability, and regional availability.
• Represent the ML Platform team in broader AI Foundations and Riot-wide planning forums—connecting strategy to execution and ensuring alignment with Riot’s broader technical ecosystem.

 

Required Qualifications: 

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering
• 8+ years of management experience, including managing engineers and team leads
• Experience founding or scaling global infrastructure/platform teams from the ground up
• Demonstrated ability to lead delivery of technical products used by other developers, engineers, or researchers
• Working knowledge of production ML systems, including model inference, CI/CD for ML artifacts, observability, and cost optimization
• Experience with cloud-native orchestration architectures (e.g., Kubernetes, GPU scheduling, container orchestration)
• Strong execution skills—ability to translate long-term vision into well-scoped milestones, track progress, and unblock teams
• Comfortable making trade-offs between velocity, cost, and maintainability while managing stakeholder expectations

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience launching internal platforms or ML infrastructure products at scale
• Familiarity with MLOps and model serving tools (e.g., MLflow, KServe, BentoML, TorchServe, Seldon Core, DVC, LakeFS, etc)
• Exposure to A/B testing infrastructure, especially in online or latency-sensitive environments
• Prior experience with budgeting, CPU & GPU utilization tracking, and platform efficiency work
• Experience working in cross-functional settings with research, infra, and game teams
• Familiarity with global infrastructure requirements, including delivery to China or other regional deployments

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!

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.