The interview process was extremely long and drawn out over a couple months leading up to an onsite interview. The first was an exploratory call, then 1:1 with the would-be-hiring-manager, then two virtual coding interviews; I failed the first because I lacked Java expertise (something I was immediately up front about and assured was a non issue... turns out it's a big issue).
The eventual onsite interview was generally pleasant with the noc, product, and design folks, as well as what would have been the hiring manager. The hiring manager in particular was someone I would have loved to work with.
However the two "technical" interviews were each pairs of engineers who had absolutely zero clue how to conduct an interview, and were clearly out of sync with the process. At one point one of the two engineers who I later discovered would be a direct report for the position asked me if they were "doing this correctly" - referring to the interview. We ended 15-20 minutes early and I asked the typical "what are your biggest challenges" and "why do you work here" questions, and was mortified to hear their biggest challenge was that "we have no environment to test in" for this particular team.
The other pair went extremely deep into the underlying kernel interaction of nodejs vs jvm and failed me because of a "lack of depth" when working through that exercise; while I understand their intent it was clear this was actually two extremely talented engineers trying to prove they were smarter than the candidate, rather than screening a candidate for their ability to be a technical leader. I concede these two engineers were exceptional and they spent an hour proving it to me.
The hiring manager later said I received 4/5 "thumbs up" on the panel and they'd like to move forward and drew out an org hierarchy with a circle where I would be, which was nothing at all what the recruiter had led me to believe for the previous three months including two official phone interviews, two separate in depth prep phone calls, a phone screen and a personal chat with a Director who frankly gave an amazing perspective of the company from the St. Louis side which by all accounts is nothing like how Santa Monica operates.
Long story short is that after >7 months of this process it is abundantly clear Riot is very desperate for managers but has absolutely no clue how to hire them, so they've sunken to desperate measures of baiting and switching candidates with higher positions hoping to sell them on bro culture and free snacks and video games at work. That, on top of an egregious bias for Java, and anything other than Java experience makes you an immediate second class citizen, I would caution anyone who does not view an EM position of 4-5 contractors as a promotion or career goal away from Riot in every way.
It's also worth noting, that your final step as a "leader" will be to interview with a Director and/or the CTO. What concerned me is that it appeared from the outside that all Director, VP, and C level technical leaders were out of St Louis; so I would again advise any candidate to weigh that very heavily when considering a position, particularly out of Santa Monica.
