Senior VFX Technical Artist - Unpublished R&D Product

Riot Games is hiring a Senior VFX Technical Artist - Unpublished R&D Product in Sydney, AU for a fulltime onsite role. The team at Riot focuses on creating player experiences, and this position blends 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. This is a chance to contribute to an experimental project that lives in the studio’s R&D space.

You’ll report to the Technical Art Manager and work onsite as part of a collaborative group that values craft and clear communication. The role is well suited to someone who enjoys building pipelines, tooling, and systems that help artists work more efficiently while maintaining strong visuals and dependable performance. If you want to shape how VFX lives inside a real-time product from the ground up, this could be a fit.

Day by day, you’ll be hands-on in Unreal Engine, prototyping Niagara-based solutions and artist-facing tools, while also shaping Houdini workflows and documenting best practices. You’ll own end-to-end technical problems, from building modular effects and scalable libraries to refining content pipelines that enable rapid iteration and reliable production. The work emphasizes readability for players, performance budgets, and the ability to balance quality with runtime constraints, all while collaborating with VFX Art, Design, Engineering, and Technical Art to turn creative needs into robust technical solutions.

Shaping the VFX backbone in real time

You’ll own and evolve scalable VFX systems, tools, libraries, and content pipelines in Unreal Engine and Niagara, creating reusable, modular, and parameterised workflows that empower artists to generate varied content from a solid foundation. Collaboration is key, as you’ll translate creative and gameplay requirements into dependable technical solutions and advocate for artist workflows and player readability. You’ll build artist-facing tools, scripts, and automation, including Houdini-based procedural workflows and integrations between DCC apps and real-time content pipelines. The role involves hands-on work in Unreal Engine to prototype and validate systems using Niagara modules and Scratchpad, Blueprint, and material workflows, while profiling and optimizing effects for visual clarity, memory usage, and runtime performance, and helping set practical budgets for high-density effects and constrained environments. Documentation, standards, and production support practices are part of the job to keep VFX workflows approachable and capable of evolving over time.

Foundations and extras

• 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

Nice-to-have foundations

• 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 breakdowns, reusable systems, artist-facing tools, pipeline improvements, and the impact of your work on content production

For this role, you’ll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. Riot will consider your past studies, experience, and your personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players’ experiences, this could be your role!

Perks and practical details

Riot emphasises work / life balance with an open paid time off policy, paid parental leave for both primary and secondary carers, and flexible work schedules to fit your lifestyle. There are communal spaces for gaming, a play fund to broaden knowledge of players and community, and plenty of snacks to power through the day. In addition, Riot offers medical insurance that covers you and your dependents, an Employee Assistance Program, a wellness fund, donation matching of time and money to registered charities, and Learning and Development opportunities.

At Riot Games, the focus is on putting players first, and teams are built to value collaboration and diverse perspectives. If this sounds like the kind of environment you want to contribute to, Riot looks forward to your application.