Senior Manager, Software Engineering (Graphics)- League of Legends

As a Senior Engineering Manager on the Graphics team, you’ll shape how League of Legends looks, feels, and performs for millions of players worldwide. You’ll lead one of Riot’s most tenured and accomplished teams—guiding highly skilled engineers building the core rendering engine and tools that bring the game to life. You’ll own the vision for rendering at League, setting direction across performance, visual fidelity, and developer workflows. Partnering closely with artists, designers, engineers, and other leaders across the League Studios Engineering organization, you’ll ensure our technology scales globally while unlocking new creative possibilities.

We build the foundational rendering frameworks, tools, and pipelines that power League’s visuals—making every frame clear, responsive, and competition-ready. From shader optimization to lighting and real-time rendering, our work defines how abilities, skins, and game modes show up for players. Whether it’s improving clarity in a decisive team fight, supporting modes like Arena and Swarm, or evolving the engine to better serve today’s players and those to come, your team is at the center of it. This is a high-impact leadership role: you’ll set strategy, grow world-class engineers, and stay close to the work to ensure exceptional execution.

Our stack is rooted in C++, with Qt for tooling and Python for automation. This role is based out of our Los Angeles area headquarters.

Responsibilities:

• Serve as the vision holder for the rendering technology that powers League of Legends
• Staff, manage, mentor, lead, and cultivate a team of 5-10 software engineers
• Partner closely with product, delivery, technical, and quality leads to support your team and align on outcomes
• Ensure the technology you build serves the long-term needs of a wide range of content developers
• Coordinate with individuals and external partners across multiple time zones around the world
• Design the composition of your team and hire to ensure it has the skills and experience needed to achieve your goals

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 3+ years in engineering management
• Experience leading teams shipping large-scale, modular client/engine or tools software
• Extensive experience in C/C++ development
• 4+ years of experience in game development industry
• Hands-on experience with rendering or graphics systems (e.g., modern rendering pipelines, GPU/CPU performance, graphics tooling)

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.