Senior VFX Technical Artist - Unpublished R&D Product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 As a Senior VFX Technical Artist on an unpublished R&D product, you’ll help establish and evolve the VFX systems and content pipelines that bring the experience to life.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. • Maintain documentation, standards, and production support practices that make VFX workflows easier to adopt, troubleshoot, and improve over time. Required Qualifications: • Senior-level professional experience as a Technical Artist, VFX Technical Artist, or closely related role in games or real-time content production. • Advanced hands-on Unreal Engine experience, including Niagara systems, Niagara modules and Scratchpad, Blueprint, and material authoring or Material Graphs. • Strong scripting and automation skills for artist-facing tools and content workflows, with the ability to work productively in Python, Blueprint, or comparable scripting environments. • Hands-on pipeline development experience, including procedural workflows, asset generation, and integration with real-time content pipelines. • Proven experience designing or maintaining reusable, modular, and parameterized VFX systems, libraries, or production workflows. • Strong understanding of real-time VFX readability, profiling, optimization, and performance budgeting, with the ability to balance visual quality and runtime constraints. • Demonstrated ability to collaborate across Art, Design, and Engineering, communicate technical trade-offs clearly, and support artists through tool iteration and problem-solving. Desired Qualifications: • Experience supporting large-scale multiplayer or live-service content pipelines, where consistency, scalability, and maintainability are central production concerns. • Experience developing procedural content workflows or reusable generation systems in Houdini, Unreal, or related tools. • Experience with streaming, resource, memory, or workload optimization for content-rich real-time experiences. • Familiarity with shader or engine-level development, including HLSL, C++, or comparable low-level graphics and runtime technologies. • A portfolio or reel that demonstrates technical b