Engineering Manager (Gaming & Platform Engineering) Job

Engineering Manager (Gaming & Platform Engineering)

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to lead and grow high-performing engineering teams responsible for building scalable gaming systems, live-service infrastructure, and platform services. This role combines technical leadership with people management, ensuring teams deliver high-quality software while continuously improving engineering practices, execution efficiency, and system reliability.

As an Engineering Manager, you will guide distributed teams working across backend systems, platform infrastructure, AI-enabled features, and game services. You will play a key role in execution planning, technical direction, hiring, and career development while collaborating closely with product, design, and executive stakeholders.

This role requires a strong technical foundation, proven leadership experience, and the ability to manage complex engineering initiatives across multiple teams and time zones.

Key Responsibilities
Team Leadership & People Management
-Lead, mentor, and support multiple engineering teams building backend systems, platform services, and game infrastructure.
-Foster a high-performance engineering culture focused on ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement.
-Conduct regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and career development planning for engineers.
-Identify skill gaps and support training, mentorship, and growth opportunities.
-Promote a culture of collaboration, psychological safety, and technical excellence.
Project Execution & Delivery
-Own end-to-end delivery of engineering projects across backend, platform, and infrastructure domains.
-Work with product managers and technical leads to define scope, milestones, and delivery timelines.
-Ensure predictable execution of complex engineering initiatives across distributed teams.
-Manage trade-offs between scope, quality, speed, and technical debt.
-Track engineering progress and ensure timely delivery of production systems.
Technical Leadership & Architecture Support
-Collaborate with architects and senior engineers to define scalable system designs.
-Provide technical oversight for backend services, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure.
-Ensure engineering teams follow best practices in system design, API development, and service reliability.
-Participate in architecture reviews and technical decision-making processes.
-Guide teams in solving complex engineering challenges related to scalability, latency, and system reliability.
Engineering Standards & Process Improvement
-Establish and enforce engineering best practices across teams, including coding standards, testing strategies, and release processes.
-Improve software development lifecycle efficiency through CI/CD optimization and automation.
-Drive adoption of observability, monitoring, and reliability engineering practices.
-Promote consistent use of design patterns and architectural standards across teams.
-Continuously improve engineering workflows, tooling, and operational processes.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
-Partner closely with product managers, game designers, and business stakeholders to align engineering efforts with product goals.
-Translate business requirements into technical execution plans with engineering leads.
-Communicate project status, risks, and trade-offs to executive leadership.
-Ensure alignment between technical strategy and product roadmap priorities.
-Act as a bridge between engineering teams and non-technical stakeholders.
Hiring & Organizational Growth
-Lead recruitment efforts for backend engineers, platform engineers, and technical specialists.
-Conduct technical interviews and participate in hiring decisions.
-Build and scale distributed engineering teams across multiple locations and time zones.
-Define team structure and help shape organizational growth strategy.
-Onboard new engineers and ensure smooth integration into teams and projects.
Reliability, Scalability & Operational Excellence
-Ensure engineering teams build systems that are reliable, scalable, and maintainable.
-Promote strong observability practices including logging, monitoring, and alerting.
-Oversee incident response processes and postmortem analysis for production issues.
-Drive continuous improvements in system stability and operational efficiency.
-Ensure systems meet performance, availability, and scalability requirements for live gaming environments.
Distributed Team Management
-Manage engineering teams across multiple locations and time zones.
-Establish effective communication practices for distributed collaboration.
-Ensure alignment and coordination across remote teams working on shared systems.
-Support asynchronous workflows and documentation-driven development practices.
-Build a cohesive engineering culture across geographically distributed teams.
Required Qualifications
-7+ years of software engineering experience with a strong technical background.
-3+ years of experience in engineering management or technical leadership roles.
-Proven experience managing distributed engineering teams.
-Strong understanding of backend systems, distributed systems, and cloud-native architecture.
-Experience delivering large-scale software projects in production environments.
-Strong ability to lead technical discussions and understand system architecture.
-Experience working closely with product and cross-functional stakeholders.
-Strong communication, leadership, and organizational skills.
-Ability to balance technical depth with people management responsibilities.
Preferred Qualifications
-Experience in gaming, live-service platforms, or large-scale consumer systems.
-Background in backend engineering, platform engineering, or distributed systems architecture.
-Familiarity with cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Azure.
-Experience with Kubernetes, microservices, and event-driven architectures.
-Exposure to AI/ML systems, data platforms, or real-time analytics systems.
-Experience scaling engineering teams in high-growth or startup environments.
-Knowledge of observability tools (Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry).
-Experience building engineering processes from early-stage or rapidly scaling organizations.

Technical Environment
Backend Systems: Node.js, Go, Python, Java
Architecture: Microservices, Distributed Systems, Event-Driven Architectures
Cloud Platforms: AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure
Infrastructure: Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, CI/CD Pipelines
Data Systems: PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, Elasticsearch
Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry
Collaboration Tools: Jira, Confluence, GitHub, Slack

What Success Looks Like
-Engineering teams consistently deliver high-quality, scalable systems on time.
-Distributed teams operate efficiently with strong alignment and communication.
-Systems built by the teams are reliable, observable, and production-ready at scale.
-Engineering practices and standards improve development velocity and code quality.
-Team members grow professionally with clear career development paths.
-Cross-functional stakeholders trust engineering execution and delivery predictability.
-The organization successfully scales engineering capacity while maintaining technical excellence.