Job Description
As a Technical Art Director, you will lead and determine the technical art needs across all of the different creative and technical teams in Riot's Central Creative Department. You will partner with experienced Technical Art Directors and Principals across all of Riot to create long-lasting tools, workflows, and pipelines, so that Creatives work without technical hurdles in production. Additionally, you will work with everyone across the studio to ensure healthy best practices and support across the discipline.
As a Director, Tech Art on the Central Creative team, you will report to the Head of Riot's Creative Department. You will establish a future-facing workflow and pipeline, the next gen standards for Rigging & Animation tools, and build a long-term strategy for Riot's world-wide multi-studio future. You will manage technical artists designing and creating tools for games, cinematics, music videos, AR/VR, and other domains. We are looking for a Tech Art Director with a background in Unreal and has shipped multiple games on multiple platforms. We are looking for a background in game-development and pipelines as a whole. You will identify strategic art resource needs and promote hiring for all tech art roles on the team. As a part of the leadership team, you'll develop strategies and eliminate obstacles with other leaders to achieve broader product goals.
Responsibilities:
• Communicate a cohesive vision and standard for artistic workflows and pipelines
• Be an active member in defining the discipline of tech art, studio-wide
• Amplify artistic capabilities while maintaining efficiency and sustainability
• Lead teams in identifying new opportunities to incorporate technology to increase art workflow efficiency and unlock new creative opportunities
• Manage technical artists and technical art leads
• Work with recruiting and art leadership to establish and help grow the technical art discipline over time
• Guide Riot's Tech Art braintrust across all products
• Ensure staffing and allocation of technical artists across product teams
• Work with IT and other technical organizations across the company to ensure understanding and support for product
• Ensure artists and technical artists have the proper tools and support for success
• Partner with other Technical Art Directors at the studio to develop a cohesive vision and shared standards across the discipline
Required Qualifications:
• 15+ years of experience as a technical artist in games or related industries
• Expert mastery of at least one and familiarity with other game engines (such as Unreal or Unity)
• Experience in all aspects of character pipelines (rigs, skinning, skins)
• Experience in game development
• Expertise with Maya and scripting in Python,
• Experience in shader development (e.g. HLSL)
• Experience with and commitment to building long-term maintainable, testable, portable, and stable systems
• Experience building strategic visions and working within leadership in large organizations
• Experience translating artistic requirements to sustainable workflow designs
Desired Qualifications:
• Experience in environment and prop pipelines
• Experience working with vendors and technology partners
As a part of the application process, please provide a portfolio or demo reel of your work.
For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise that prioritizes the delight of players. We will look at your past studies, experience, and your personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about the experiences of players, this could be the role for you!
Our Perks:
Riot has a focus on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy, in addition to other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner and children and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.
Riot Games fosters a player and workplace experience that values teamwork embodied by the Summoner's Code and Community Code. Our culture embraces differences as a strength, and our values are the guiding principles for how we approach work. We are committed to putting diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the center of everything we do, and promoting a fair and collaborative culture where Rioters treat one another with dignity and respect. We encourage you to read more about our value of thriving together and our ongoing work to build the most inclusive company in gaming
It's our policy to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and members of Riot Games, Inc. Riot Games makes reasonable accommodations for handicapped and disabled Rioters and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, handicap, veteran status, marital status, criminal history, or any other category protected by applicable federal and state law, including the City of Los Angeles' Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance relating to an applicant's criminal history (LAMC 189.00).
Jobcode: Reference SBJ-d8762m-54-163-221-133-42 in your application.