Technical Director

Overview

Business Unit LIGHTSPEED STUDIOS is made up of passionate players who advance the art & science of game development through great stories, great gameplay, and advanced technology. We are focused on bringing next generation experiences to gamers who want to enjoy them anywhere, anytime, across multiple genres and devices.

• Own the technical vision, architecture, and execution strategy required to deliver a high‑performance, scalable, and reliable player experience across PC and console.
• Lead internal and global co‑development engineering teams, aligning technology decisions to milestone goals and ensuring technical delivery supports both creative ambition and operational realities.
• Own the end‑to‑end technical strategy and architecture across all phases:
  Vertical Slice, Early Access, launch, and live operations.
• Define the technical roadmap aligned to production milestones, identifying risks early and driving mitigation plans.
• Architect core systems and make build‑vs‑buy decisions, including evaluation and integration of third‑party technologies.
• Establish and enforce engineering standards across architecture, code quality, performance budgets, build systems, and release processes.
• Lead and evaluate work from global co‑development teams, ensuring quality, alignment, and accountability across time zones.
• Partner with design and art to build scalable tools and pipelines that maximize content velocity.
• Drive multiplayer performance, networking stability, backend scalability, and live‑service readiness.
• Oversee CI/CD, branching strategy, Dev Ops practices, and platform certification requirements.
• Mentor and grow engineering leadership, contributing to hiring and org design.
• Use playtest data, telemetry, and player‑facing metrics (performance, stability, latency) to inform technical priorities.

• Shipped at least one AAA PC or console title as Technical Director or Lead Engineer.
• Proven experience leading and evaluating global co‑development teams.
• Demonstrated experience architecting large‑scale systems, including third‑party integrations.
• Experience defining and maintaining performance budgets, stability targets, and scalability goals.
• Broad technical foundation across gameplay systems, engine development, rendering, AI, networking, or cloud infrastructure.
• Deep expertise in at least one core technical domain.
• Proven ability to align cross‑discipline leadership and drive execution through ambiguity.
• Player‑focused mindset grounded in measurable quality outcomes.
• Shipped titles on both PC and console platforms.
• Experience managing co‑development across time zones, languages, and cultures.
• Delivered or operated a multiplayer FPS at 100k+ peak concurrency.
• Experience taking a game from prototype through launch and into live operations.
• Experience with Unreal Engine.
• Background in engineering, computer science, or related field.
• Bilingual in English/Mandarin preferred to communicate with relevant stakeholders and international team.

Location:

State(s) US-California-Los Angeles

• Base pay range: $ to $ per year.
• Sign‑on payment, relocation package, and restricted stock units may be offered on a case‑by‑case basis.
• Medical, dental, vision, life and disability benefits; participation in the Company’s 401(k) plan.
• Up to 15 to 25 days of vacation per year (depending on tenure), up to 13 public holidays, and up to 10 paid sick days per year.

Equal Employment Opportunity  an equal opportunity employer, we firmly believe that diverse voices fuel our innovation and allow us to better serve our users and the community. We foster an environment where every employee of Tencent feels supported and inspired to achieve individual and common goals.