Engineering Manager

Product Group Focus

Engineering Manager – Challenge & Economy, Candy Crush Saga.
King operates mobile games at a massive scale. The Challenge & Economy Product Group builds systems for Candy Crush Saga’s economy, rewards, and challenge features.

Your Role Within Our Kingdom

Teams are cross-functional, involving Engineering, QA, Product, Production, Creative, and Data. Each team is led by a trio of Engineering Manager, Product Manager, and Producer. This is a highly present role: you will be involved in team rituals, technical discussions, and day-to-day decisions. You will coach engineers, strengthen team culture, ensure quality and pace, and represent Engineering in wider leadership.

Responsibilities

• Hire, coach, and develop a team of Engineers and QA with clear expectations, regular feedback, and growth conversations.
• Be an active member of the team: run and support rituals, join technical discussions, and facilitate quick decision-making.
• Own the quality, predictability, and timeliness of team deliveries.
• Champion engineering standards, including the responsible use of AI-assisted engineering.
• Lead alongside the Product Manager and Producer, shaping prioritization and roadmaps, and bringing Engineering and QA perspectives into planning.
• Represent Engineering in Product Group (Challenge & Economy) and Domain (Player Value) leadership forums.
• Partner with Senior and Principal Engineers to keep technical and product strategy aligned.
• Surface cross-team risks and dependencies early and ensure ownership is explicit.

Skills and Experience

• Leadership: Experience developing people and teams; built a strong Engineering culture previously.
• Management Experience: Led Engineers as a manager; ideally having been a senior individual contributor previously. Comfortable adding value in technical conversations without needing to be the deepest expert in the room.
• Stakeholder Skills: Partner effectively with Product, Production, and other functions to align on priorities and trade-offs.
• Product Experience: Solid experience with live, large-scale consumer products.
• Decision-Making: Comfortable with data-informed decision-making.
• Game Industry: Games experience is a strong plus, though not a requirement.
• Standards: Hold a high bar for quality and pace, and able to hold others to it constructively.
• Communication: Experience leading or working in distributed teams; clear communication across disciplines and levels, both in writing and conversation.
• AI Literacy: Use AI tools in your own work and are thoughtful about team adoption.

Location and Working Conditions

• Based in Stockholm, Sweden, at the city centre office.
• Encourages regular time in the office to work together.
• Non-prescriptive regarding specific number of days; balance is left to the individual and the team.

Company Culture and Context

• Mission: Making the World Playful.
• Operations: Leading interactive entertainment company for the mobile world with over 20 years of history.
• Scale: Over 200 million people play King games every month.
• Ownership: King is part of Microsoft.
• Diversity: Designs games for everyone and employs people from all kinds of backgrounds to foster originality.
• Values: Seriously playful, experimenting, learning, adapting, and playing as a team to have impact on a massive scale.