Manager, Technical Art - Unpublished R&D Product

Riot Games was founded on the principle that putting players first leads to the exceptional. As we expand our global content, we seek a Tech Art Lead based in Singapore to elevate our technical art and maintain alignment across Riot and partner studios.

That's where you come in.

As a Manager of Technical Art, you will lead and support defining the technical art needs across all of the different creative and technical teams on an unpublished R&D product. You will partner with the Art Director to inform on best practices and pipelines, workflow, and asset production so artists can work efficiently and without technical hurdles in production.

Responsibilities:

• As a Technical Art Lead on the team, you will oversee and be accountable for the quality of the work the team delivers and set the bar for excellence. 
• Provide technical direction for your team.
• Own the full lifecycle management of your team members—from selection and onboarding through performance development, feedback, and exits where necessary—ensuring the right people and skills are in place to deliver at Riot’s quality bar.
• You will establish and maintain a highly engaged, creative, and motivated workspace for your team to unleash people’s potential.
• You will lead teams in identifying new opportunities to incorporate technology to increase art workflow efficiency and unlock new creative opportunities
• You will lead and improve team rituals to support high-quality craft and individual growth
• You will accomplish your mission with complete autonomy if needed; you're dedicated to vigilantly finding creative and effective solutions to eliminate complex problems.
• Collaborate with the relevant discipline leads and production teams in Singapore and Los Angeles to maintain consistency in workflow, and quality expectations.
• Amplify the team’s artistic capabilities while maintaining efficient and sustainable memory and performance
• Ensure technical support to art and animation in both Maya and Motionbuilder across the product
• Prototype new products and build effective asset generation pipelines to support them
• Work with IT and other technical organizations across the company to ensure alignment and support for product
• Build close relationships with the artists and engineers you work alongside with to understand their needs and provide leadership on tool and pipeline development
• Partner with other Managers of Technical Art and Technical Art Directors of the unpublished R&D product to develop a cohesive vision and shared standards across the discipline
• Collaborate with our external partner studios to build and maintain the pipelines, tools and guidance they need to consistently deliver high quality assets

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of professional experience as a technical artist in games or related industries
• Deep expertise in Character Rigging and deformation systems
• Strong proficiency in dynamics (cloth, hair, physics-based secondary motion)
• Proven experience leading/mentoring teams and individuals
• Experience with Maya and authoring Maya tools with Python/C++
• Experience developing games, prototypes or tools in Unreal using Python and Blueprints
• Past experience working with multiple source control tools such as git and perforce
• Experience with and commitment to building long-term maintainable, testable, portable, and stable systems
• Experience defining and implementing team strategies
• Experience giving thorough direction and delivering timely, clear feedback
• Strong art fundamentals that enable the creation of content, prototypes and tools and pipelines that would match the Product Art Direction requirements
• A strong communicator and able to convey abstract/sophisticated ideas in a concise way, in English or in Mandarin

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience authoring pipeline tool sets for lighting, shaders, and content optimization
• Experience with 3D math, game engines, and a fundamental understanding of UX/UI principles when applied to tool development 
• Experience managing distributed teams across time zones and in remote work environments
• Tools experience: have worked in several tools, pipelines, and game engines 
• Fluent in Mandarin Chinese and English, with the ability to communicate effectively in multilingual, cross-cultural treatments