Data Engineering Manager

At Riot, Data Engineers play a critical role in transforming data into actionable insights that drive decisions across the company. Our engineers are deeply player-focused and collaborate across diverse teams to enhance the experiences of millions of players worldwide.

As a Senior Data Engineering Manager within VALORANT, you will be shaping the direction of the game by working with designers, product managers, data scientists, analysts, and engineers using data to better serve and understand our game and our players. This role is designed for an engineering leader who thrives in ambiguous environments, takes initiative to solve real problems quickly, and enjoys wearing multiple hats. As one of the senior-most data leaders on the game team, you will influence how data is managed and used across the studio.

Responsibilities:

• Manage a team of 5 data engineers, provide them career coaching and growth opportunities, and ensure all work is aligned with business needs.
• Partner with leaders in analytics, data science, and product disciplines to align on the most important data engineering projects and collaborate with them through all phases of the development and operational lifecycle.
• Set the technical direction of the team, including processes and tooling.
• Be accountable for the technical health of products owned by the team.
• Working with other engineers, standardize best practices for instrumentation, telemetry, and metrics collection
• Ensure data quality, governance, and compliance with regulatory standards (e.g., GDPR, CCPA).
• Support cost optimization by ensuring scalable and efficient data solutions.
• Build healthy relationships with data engineering teams across Riot, and lead by shaping infrastructure, craft standards, tooling, and organizational best practices.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field.
• 10+ years experience in data engineering or a related field.  5+ years managing a team.
• Hands-on expertise in big-data technologies, particularly the Apache stack (Airflow, Spark, etc).
• Proficiency in cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP) and Databricks.
• Expertise in designing efficient and scalable data models with large data sets across multiple teams and in collaboration with insights or data stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally with engineering, analytics, and product teams.
• Experience mentoring and guiding other engineers.

Desired Qualifications:

• 2+ years of experience in data engineering for major video game titles.
• 1+ years experience working with DBT in a production environment