Senior Software Engineer

About the role

Senior Software Engineer, Tech Foundations, Shanghai

Overview

Riot Games was founded 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 is for them that we continue to evolve and improve the League of Legends experience. We seek 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 are passionate about games. We embrace those who see things differently, are not afraid to experiment, and who have a healthy disregard for constraints.

This role is located in our Shanghai office. You will report to the Engineering Manager of the Tech Foundations Team. You will help Riot understand and design software that satisfies China-specific requirements and implement solutions on Riot standard tech stack. You will write core backend services and tools to ensure high quality of service for games. You will use your experience with microservices to build reliable, scalable systems that are easy to understand and operate. You will also draw on your experience with engineering best practices to ensure that our testing and deployment tech is top of the line. You need to work with multiple teams inside and outside Riot to drive and deliver high-quality results.

Responsibilities

• Write high-quality code that follows Riot and industry best practices.
• Build and operate scalable microservices that require performance and reliability.
• Contribute to the design and building of services.
• Work in a variety of different technical capacities, contributing to code bases in multiple languages and tech stacks.
• Develop and adopt tools that improve engineering productivity and system health.
• Participate in the team on-call rotation to support live services.
• Collaborate with internal and external teams across the product lifecycle, using your collaboration skills and technical expertise to ship the product.
• Perform hands-on coding and code review, being accountable for the quality and maintainability of the team codebase.

Required Qualifications

• Hold a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or equivalent hands-on experience.
• Demonstrate deep, practical coding skills in at least one of the following languages: C/C++, Java, Go, C#.
• Have years of experience operating and maintaining live web services and troubleshooting live issues.
• Have built fault-tolerant distributed systems, covering requirements gathering, architecture design, project breakdown, and execution.
• Have worked with cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, or Tencent Cloud.
• Communicate clearly and work well with varied collaborators under pressure.
• Are fluent in Mandarin and English, with strong written and verbal capabilities in both languages.

Desired Qualifications

• Have built client game features and understand player-focused development.
• Have worked with game content tools and related pipelines in the past.

What success looks like

You will thrive through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. You will partner with teams to uphold China-specific standards for League of Legends, keeping experiences smooth for millions. You will craft careful backend solutions with disciplined hands, treating every line as craft. You will test and collaborate so that quality feels instinctive, ship increments that pass audits, monitoring, and readiness checks on schedule, and guide juniors through mentorship so that standards stay high and knowledge moves forward.

Practical notes

• Compensation is listed in Chinese Yuan (CNY) on an annual basis.
• This role involves full-time engagement.

Skills and tools

• Programming languages: C/C++, Java, Go, C#
• Cloud platforms: AWS, Azure, Tencent Cloud
• Databases: MySQL, Redis
• Libraries and frameworks: Protobuf, gRPC
• DevOps: Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, monitoring
• Editors: Visual Studio Code, IntelliJ IDEA