Manager, Anti-Cheat Engineering (Embedded Vanguard) - Central Technology, Anti-Cheat

Title: Manager, Anti-Cheat Engineering (Embedded Vanguard) - Central Technology, Anti-Cheat Location: Los Angeles, USA; Mercer Island, USA; Redwood City, USA

Riot’s Anti-Cheat team is versatile and passionate about our craft. We understand the player impact of cheating in games and are focused on setting the highest bar for the integrity of multiplayer games. We relish the opportunity to work with new tech stacks and bring security to all of Riot's games; each with its own security risk profile and complex challenges. At the most fundamental level, our goal is to promote the best player experience by protecting the legitimacy of their favorite games.

As an Anti-Cheat Engineering Manager for Mobile Vanguard,  you will lead the team responsible for the ongoing development and evolution of Vanguard Anti-Cheat’s services on mobile. You’ll help set direction, shape priorities, and ensure the team delivers secure, reliable capabilities across Vanguard’s mobile suite in a timely manner. While your primary focus will be enabling the team and driving outcomes, your strong fluency in mobile security and cheat techniques will allow you to guide architecture, challenge technical decisions, and step directly into complex debugging or investigations when needed. You’ll help the team anticipate and analyze emerging cheat techniques, then translate those findings into effective detections, mitigations, and preventative controls. You will report to the Senior Engineering Manager of the Anti-Cheat  team.

Responsibilities:

• Manage, identify, recruit, interview, and hire engineers to help the team scale effectively
• Set direction and drive high-impact anti-cheat capabilities from ambiguity through production to prevent cheating in mobile and console environments
• Lead the team in rapidly translating emerging threats into resilient detections and preventative countermeasures that can be safely deployed at scale
• Balance immediate threat response with proactive technical investments that anticipate adversaries’ next moves or eliminate common abuse vectors entirely
• Partner with game teams across genres to understand their specific security needs and help shape the security landscape
• Promote secure coding standards and design that reduce vectors for cheating
• Keep up-to-date with the state of cheats and cheating techniques across mobile titles
• Support game teams directly in understanding cheating ecosystems and integrating Anti-Cheat

Required Qualifications:

• Minimum 4+ years of industry experience
• Familiarity or experience with Android and/or iOS platform security models
• Deep technical understanding of mobile platforms (Android/iOS)
• Experience building and deploying mobile native (C/C++) SDKs and/or frameworks

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience with Android and/or iOS build tools (Android SDK/NDK, Xcode, LLVM)
• Familiarity with Android & iOS executable formats, reverse engineering, or binary exploitation
• Experience with mobile reverse engineering tools (Frida, IDA Pro, Radare2, etc)
• Experience with Gen9 Console (Xbox Series XS and/or PS5) development a plus
• Experience with macOS platform and security features a plus

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and choices that focus on your fellow Rioters, who are the customers of your work. Being a dedicated fan of games is not necessary for this position!

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.