Welcome to the world of land-based gaming. At Light & Wonder, it’s all about the games, and our Gaming team builds cutting-edge technology, products, and content for the most iconic casinos and operators across the globe.
Light & Wonder is seeking a Senior Manager, Software Engineering to lead our Video and Game Development Technology (GDK) teams. This role is responsible for the software systems, tools, and frameworks that enable game studios to efficiently develop, test, and deliver high-quality video-based gaming content across cabinets and platforms.
As a senior engineering leader, you will manage and grow a high-performing team focused on game-facing technology, video systems, tooling, and workflows. You will partner closely with game studios, platform teams, hardware, art, sound, and product stakeholders to ensure our game development ecosystem is scalable, reliable, and aligned with business and regulatory needs.
This role blends people leadership, technical direction, and cross-functional influence, with a strong emphasis on enabling developers, reducing friction in game production, and evolving GDK as a product used across the organization.
Essential Job Functions:
Lead the design, development, and evolution of video, rendering, tooling, and game development support systems used by internal game studios.
Own and evolve GDK components such as developer tooling, frameworks, pipelines, and supporting services that enable game creation and iteration.
Provide technical direction across Unity-based workflows, media pipelines, and game-adjacent systems.
Ensure solutions meet performance, reliability, security, and regulatory requirements in a highly regulated gaming environment.
Manage, mentor, and develop a team of software engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, quality, and continuous improvement.
Build team capability by reducing single points of failure and enabling shared ownership through documentation, coaching, and deliberate skill development.
Partner with engineers on career growth, goal setting, and performance feedback.
Support hiring and onboarding as the team scales.
Partner with game studios, platform engineering, hardware, art, sound, QA, and product teams to deliver seamless game development solutions.
Translate studio needs into scalable technical solutions and tooling improvements.
Serve as a key technical and organizational interface between game teams and platform capabilities.
Training and/or Experience:
7+ years of professional experience in software engineering, including people leadership.
Experience leading teams responsible for game development tooling, video systems, or developer platforms.
Experience working closely with game developers, artists, and cross-disciplinary teams.
Gaming industry experience preferred but not required.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
Strong software engineering background; experience with C#, C++, Unity, or related game-adjacent technologies.
Familiarity with video pipelines, rendering systems, or media-heavy workflows is a plus.
Strong understanding of software development lifecycles, tooling, and CI/CD practices.
Proven ability to lead, mentor, and scale engineering teams.
Excellent communication skills and ability to influence across teams.
Comfortable balancing technical depth with people leadership and organizational priorities.
Additional Information
This is a hybrid role based in our Chicago studio. Team members are expected to be in the office 3 days a week to support collaboration and studio culture.
Physical Requirement
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit, stand, walk, bend, use hands, operate a computer, and have specific vision abilities to include close and distance vision, and ability to adjust focus working with computer and business equipment.
Work Conditions
The work conditions are representative and typical of similar jobs in comparable organizations.
Light & Wonder and its affiliates (collectively, L&W) are engaged in highly regulated gaming businesses. As a result, certain L&W employees may, among other things, be required to obtain a gaming or other license(s), undergo background investigations or security checks, or meet certain standards dictated by law, regulation or contracts.
In order to ensure L&W complies with its regulatory and contractual commitments, as a condition to hiring and continuing to employ its employees, L&W requires all of its employees to meet those requirements that are necessary to fulfill their individual roles. As a prerequisite to employment with L&W (to the extent permitted by law), you shall be asked to consent to L&W conducting a due diligence/background investigation on you.
This job description should not be interpreted as all-inclusive; it is intended to identify major responsibilities and requirements of the job. The employee in this position may be requested to perform other job-related tasks and responsibilities than those stated above.
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Light & Wonder is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate against applicants due to race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class. If you’d like more information about your equal employment opportunity rights as an applicant under the law, please click here for EEOC Poster.