Senior VFX Technical Artist - Unpublished R&D Product

At Riot, Senior Technical Artists build the systems, tools, and workflows that help artists create high-quality content efficiently and sustainably. In this role, you’ll combine hands-on real-time VFX craft with technical problem-solving to turn creative and gameplay goals into reusable, scalable solutions that support artists, designers, and engineers.

As a Senior VFX Technical Artist on an unpublished R&D product, you’ll help establish and evolve the VFX systems and content pipelines that bring the experience to life. You’ll own meaningful technical problems end to end, from prototyping Niagara-based solutions and artist-facing tools to developing Houdini workflows, documenting best practices, and improving performance and production reliability.

You will report into the Technical Art Manager of the team

Responsibilities

Own and evolve scalable VFX systems, tools, libraries, and content pipelines in Unreal Engine and Niagara. Build reusable, modular, and parameterized effects and workflows that reduce one-off production, support rapid iteration, and empower artists to create varied content from a maintainable foundation. Partner with VFX Art, Design, Engineering, and Technical Art to translate creative and gameplay needs into robust technical solutions, advocating for artist workflows and clear player-facing readability.

Develop artist-facing tools, scripts, and automation, including Houdini-based procedural workflows and integrations between DCC applications and real-time content pipelines. Work hands-on in Unreal Engine to prototype and validate systems using Niagara modules and Scratchpad, Blueprint, and material workflows. Profile and optimize effects for visual quality, gameplay clarity, memory, and runtime performance, helping establish practical budgets for high effect density and resource-constrained scenarios.