Technical Artist

Company Overview

Riot Games was established in 2006 by entrepreneurial gamers who believe that player-focused game development can result in great games. The company released its debut title, League of Legends, in 2009. The studio seeks humble but ambitious, razor-sharp professionals who are passionate about games, willing to experiment, and possess a healthy disregard for constraints.

Role Summary

As a Senior Technical Artist (Animation) for an unpublished R&D project, the candidate will focus on animation-related technical scheme design and engine implementation to build a stable, scalable animation technical foundation. The role involves close collaboration with animation, art direction, design, engineering, and other technical artists to convert artistic goals into executable technical implementations. The individual will report to the Technical Art Lead and be responsible for driving animation technical capabilities while managing the long-term development of character rigging systems.

Work Responsibilities

• Design and implement high-priority engine animation effects, including animation state machines, IK, character physics, and related animation technology infrastructure.
• Collaborate across teams to translate action performance, camera requirements, and visual goals into executable technical schemes, while continuously improving the overall performance quality and production standards of animation content.
• Identify and resolve critical technical issues in real-time animation and asset production, drive implementation, debugging, and optimization within the engine, and improve animation asset specifications for efficiency and stability.
• Build, maintain, and optimize rigging and animation technical schemes for characters, creatures, props, and performance-related requirements.
• Develop and promote tools for animation production and efficiency, as well as debugging workflows, to help the team achieve higher quality and efficiency in content realization.

Ability Requirements

• 6 years or more of experience as a technical artist in games or related industries, with solid practical experience in technical animation.
• Ability to perform technical abstraction and scheme judgment based on effect goals, with the capability to make reasonable trade-offs between animation performance, gameplay requirements, implementation costs, and long-term maintainability.
• Solid Unreal Engine experience, including familiarity with Blueprints, animation state machines, IK workflows, character physics, and camera-related implementations.
• Familiarity with Maya rigging workflows and related functionalities; understanding of the underlying logic of character rigging and animation systems.
• Excellent cross-functional communication and collaboration skills.

Preferred Conditions

• Familiarity with the League of Legends IP.
• Experience leading the development of character rigging systems or proficiency in Maya-based Python script development.
• Familiarity with rigging schemes and implementation methods for stylized or deformable characters.
• Experience with film-level narrative or performance-based high-specification character production workflows.

Additional Information

• Candidates are required to provide a portfolio or demo.
• Candidates may be required to complete an art test.
• Success is measured through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players.