Senior VFX Technical Artist – Unpublished R&D Product

Job Position(s): Senior VFX Technical Artist - Unpublished R&D Product

Riot Games Pty Ltd is hiring a Senior VFX Technical Artist for an unpublished R&D product based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. This role sits within the Technical Art department and is responsible for building the VFX systems, content pipelines, and artist-facing tools that define how real-time effects are created, optimised, and maintained across a new title still in development. It suits a technical artist who is equally comfortable prototyping Niagara modules and writing Python automation as they are talking performance budgets with an engineer or readability requirements with a designer.

About the Role

You will be working inside an R&D team building a product from the ground up, which means you are establishing VFX pipeline conventions, not inheriting them. Day to day that means owning Unreal Engine systems end to end, from Niagara-based effect libraries and procedural Houdini workflows through to documentation and production standards that other artists can actually use. This is a senior individual contributor position reporting to the Technical Art Manager, with real ownership over how the VFX pipeline scales.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and maintain scalable, modular VFX systems and content pipelines inside Unreal Engine using Niagara modules, Niagara Scratchpad, Blueprint, and material authoring workflows.
• Build parameterised, reusable effect libraries that reduce one-off production and allow artists to generate varied content from a single maintainable foundation.
• Develop procedural content workflows in Houdini and build integrations between DCC applications and the real-time content pipeline.
• Profile and optimise VFX for memory, runtime performance, and gameplay readability, establishing practical budgets for high effect density scenarios.
• Create artist-facing tools and automation scripts in Python or Blueprint that reduce friction in day-to-day VFX production workflow.
• Write and maintain documentation, standards, and support practices that make VFX workflows easier to adopt and troubleshoot across the team.

What You Bring

• Senior-level experience as a Technical Artist or VFX Technical Artist in games or real-time content production.
• Advanced hands-on Unreal Engine experience across Niagara systems, Blueprint, and material graphs.
• Scripting and automation skills in Python, Blueprint, or a comparable environment applied to artist-facing tools and content workflows.
• Proven experience designing reusable, modular VFX systems and managing real-time VFX pipeline development.
• Familiarity with HLSL, C++, or shader-level development is an advantage, as is experience on live-service or large-scale multiplayer titles.
• A portfolio or reel that includes technical breakdowns, pipeline improvements, and tool work alongside effect examples.

Why This Role

Riot Games has a track record of building long-running titles with serious production infrastructure behind them, and joining at the R&D stage of a new product means your pipeline decisions carry genuine weight. The Sydney studio gives you access to a local team with direct ties to a global technical art discipline, which is a real career development context for a senior contributor. This is a rare chance to define VFX workflow standards from the ground up rather than maintaining someone else’s.

Apply now for the Senior VFX Technical Artist role at Riot Games Pty Ltd and bring your real-time VFX pipeline experience to a product that is still being shaped.