Job Summary:
Riot Games is a company dedicated to putting players first, and they are seeking a Senior Technical Artist (Technical Animation) to define and maintain animation systems for their upcoming MMO. The role involves collaborating with animators, designers, and engineers to develop scalable animation systems while ensuring high-quality integration across the game.
Responsibilities:
• Build and maintain complex animation state machines, layered animation systems, and override logic supporting split-body for player characters, NPCs, creatures, and props.
• Collaborate with animators, character tech artists, and designers to develop efficient, believable, and tech-friendly animation flows.
• Define best practices for animation setup while owning the debuggability, documentation, maintainability, and long-term health of animation blueprints and graphs within Unreal Engine.
• Partner with engineers to build and evolve animation runtime systems and debugging workflows.
• Drive optimization efforts across animation assets and graphs to meet performance and memory targets.
• Collaborate with cross-discipline partners to ensure character systems scale effectively across massive multiplayer environments.
• Develop scalable animation retargeting strategies to support characters and creatures of varying proportions while minimizing animation counts.
Qualifications:
Required:
• 5+ years of professional experience as a technical animator or technical artist in games or related industries.
• Deep expertise with Unreal Engine animation workflows, including complex Animation Blueprints, state machines, blend spaces, and layered animation systems.
• Proven experience designing scalable, reusable animation systems for large-scope character setups, including players, NPCs, and creatures.
• Strong art foundation with a deep understanding of animation principles, anatomy, and motion.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate across art, design, and engineering disciplines
Preferred:
• Experience with Unreal Control Rig and Sequencer
• Familiarity with C++ and/or Python within Unreal Engine.
• Expertise in Autodesk Maya for rigging and animation support.
• Experience working with software like Kawaii, Chaos, Havok.
• Prior experience supporting MMO or large-scale games with complex character ecosystems.
• Experience with runtime IK, or motion warping
Company:
Riot Games is a global company that develops online games. Founded in 2006, the company is headquartered in Los Angeles, USA, with a team of 1001-5000 employees. The company is currently Late Stage.