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Director, Technical Art - League, Game Engine

As a Technical Art Director, you will lead and define technical art across all of the different creative and technical teams in League Studio. You will partner with Senior Tech Art, Art, Engineering, and Production Leadership across League Studio to guide creation and implementation of long-lasting tools, workflows, and pipelines, so that creatives can iterate efficiently without technical hurdles. Additionally, you will work with people across the Studio to ensure consistent best practices and support across the discipline.

As a Director, Tech Art on the League Studio Tech Foundations team, you will report to the Head of Tech Foundations. You will lead through supporting senior Tech Artists across League Studios to accomplish the following: establishing future-facing workflow and pipeline vision, helping establish the following general standards for rigging & animation, VFX, rendering, cut scene, level and UI editing tools, and building a long-term strategy for League of Legends' multi-game future.

You will manage technical artists on Tech Foundations, designing and creating tools to support a unified source art pipeline that serves multiple games and engines. We are looking for an extensive background in game-development and pipelines as a whole. You will identify strategic art resource needs and promote staffing 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:

• Define through collaboration with other Tech Art Directors and communicate a cohesive strategy for artistic workflows and pipelines for League Studio
• Collaboratively define and grow the Technical Art discipline within League Studio including standards and processes.
• Lead teams in identifying and prototyping new opportunities to incorporate technology to increase art workflow efficiency and unlock new creative opportunities
• Lead TA directors across the Studio to convergence of craft and workflows for shared tools
• Manage technical artists on Tech Foundations, including organizational planning, staffing, performance management and related functions.
• Partner with senior discipline leaders to define expectations between tech art, art, engineering, and production
• Represent the needs of the League Studio across Riot technical art leadership
• Fill in initial tech art gaps on new or exploratory products or teams, and set them up for sustainability
• Work with IT and other technical organizations across the company to ensure alignment and support for product
• Establish and enhance collaboration and communication between Tech Art, Engineering and Artists across League Studios projects
• Coordinate tech art efforts at a high level across the various League Studios projects
• Ensure staffing and allocation of technical artists within Tech Foundations

Required Qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience as a technical artist in games or related industries
• 8+ years experience in management in games or related industries
• Experience building strategic visions and working within leadership in large organizations
• Capability to act as an ambassador between art and engineering
• Experience with and commitment to building long-term maintainable, testable, portable, easy to use, and stable systems
• Mastery in at least one industry established game engine such as Unreal, Unity, Frostbite or Cry Engine
• Experience in multiple aspects of character pipelines (rigging, modeling, texturing and look development)
• Experience in rendering and shader development (e.g. HLSL and GLSL)
• Experience with Maya and scripting in Python
• Proficiency with object-oriented compiled languages (e.g. C++, C#)

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience with ZBrush, Substance, Houdini and Simplygon pipelines
• Experience working with external vendors and technology partners

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. We will be looking 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 .

(Los Angeles Only) Base salary range between $226,600 USD - $339,900 USD + incentive compensation + equity + 401K with company match + medical, dental, vision, and life insurance + short and long-term disability + open PTO.

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.