Principal Animation Artist (Unpublished R&D Product)

Company

Riot Games is a game development company best known for creating League of Legends and building player-focused interactive experiences.

What you will do

• Drive the quality and direction of gameplay animation, emphasizing responsiveness, clarity, and cohesion.
• Own and evolve player-facing animation systems across features and the project lifecycle.
• Define animation best practices, workflows, pipelines, and quality standards.
• Partner with design, engineering, and technical art to shape animation systems and gameplay integration.
• Lead scalable solutions for systemic challenges affecting reliability and performance.
• Mentor animators and improve cross-team collaboration, tools, pipelines, and production strategies.

Requirements

• 10+ years of professional experience in game or entertainment animation.
• Experience defining animation pipelines or standards at team or project level.
• Expert proficiency in Maya and extensive experience with Unreal Engine.
• Deep understanding of animation systems, state machines, runtime behaviors, and real-time performance.
• Experience delivering complex animation systems and influencing cross-disciplinary teams.
• Fluency in Mandarin Chinese required.

Nice to have

• Proficiency in English.
• Experience across gameplay and cinematic animation workflows.
• Experience collaborating with engineering and design on complex system design.

Culture & Benefits

• Player-focused development with an emphasis on player empathy and delight.
• Collaborative environment supporting experimentation and challenging existing constraints.
• Opportunity to influence animation craft, systems, and production practices across disciplines.