Technical Art Manager - Unpublished R&D Product

At Riot, we believe in putting players first. Our Sydney-based team is partnering globally to build next-generation features and technology on an exciting Unpublished R&D Title. The team focuses on supporting the game's visual targets and content production needs - helping our artists to realize a vibrant and rich world for players to be immersed and express themselves in.

As a Manager, Technical Art, Tools & Pipeline, you'll help define and scale the creative workflows that power content creation across our next generation of worlds. You'll lead and grow a team of talented technical artists, providing hands-on coaching, clear direction, and thoughtful feedback that elevates both craft and collaboration. By partnering closely with Art Leadership, Technical Art, Production, and Engineering, you'll help shape the tools, pipelines, and workflows that enable artists to create high-quality content efficiently and at scale.

As a Manager, Technical Art, you'll own the artist-facing ecosystem of tools and content pipelines, ensuring workflows are intuitive, documented, and built to support evolving production needs. You'll work closely with Engineering and cross-disciplinary partners to identify opportunities for workflow improvements, evaluate new technologies, and establish scalable systems that empower artists across multiple disciplines including Character Art, Animation, Environment Art, Audio, and VFX. From pipeline architecture to workflow optimization, you'll help ensure content creation systems support both immediate production goals and the long-term needs of the project. As a strategic cross-disciplinary partner, you'll communicate priorities, risks, and opportunities with clarity while helping teams make sustainable technical decisions that maximize creative impact.

You will report into the Senior Manager, Technical Art and work closely with the Tech Art Director and other members of the team abroad.

Responsibilities:

• Directly manage a team of Technical Artists, providing support, coaching, mentorship, and guidance in how they conduct their work.
• Partner with Art Leadership, Production, and Engineering to define tooling, workflow, and pipeline requirements needed to support content creation across multiple disciplines.
• Own and support artist-facing tools, workflows, and content pipelines, ensuring systems are intuitive, documented, scalable, and maintainable.
• Work closely with Engineering to evaluate technical solutions, balancing artist usability, production efficiency, and long-term sustainability.
• Guide the development and optimization of content creation pipelines that support teams working in parallel production streams.
• Support the evolution of existing tools, workflows, and pipeline systems as project needs change and scale.
• Build strong cross-disciplinary relationships to understand artist needs, identify workflow pain points, and drive meaningful improvements.
• Champion technical best practices, workflow consistency, and knowledge sharing through documentation, training, and mentorship.
• Partner with Technical Art leadership to establish team goals, craft standards, and long-term technical strategy.
• Communicate constraints, risks, and opportunities clearly to stakeholders, helping guide prioritization and technical decision-making.

Required Qualifications: 

• 6+ years of professional experience as a Technical Artist in games or a related industry, including 2+ years in a people management role leading Technical Artists or similar technical disciplines.
• Demonstrated experience leading, mentoring, and developing technical teams while fostering strong cross-functional collaboration.
• Strong proficiency in Python and experience developing scalable artist tools, content pipelines, and workflow solutions for game development.
• Professional experience with Unreal Engine 5 and modern content creation workflows, including content creation and tool development for DCC tools, with particular emphasis on Autodesk Maya and Substance Suite workflows. Experience with Houdini, Blender, ZBrush, 3DS Max, or Photoshop is a plus.
• Strong understanding of art production pipelines and the ability to translate artistic requirements into scalable technical solutions that support multiple disciplines and production needs.
• Proven experience partnering closely with engineers to develop tools, workflows, or pipeline systems that improve content creation efficiency and support artistic goals.
• Excellent communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to navigate ambiguity and act as a bridge between art and engineering.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience designing scalable pipeline architecture and workflow solutions for large content teams.
• Experience supporting character, animation, environment, audio, or VFX production workflows.
• Experience with UI development frameworks such as PySide or PyQt.
• Experience contributing to or supporting content creation efforts during early-stage, R&D, or transitional production phases.
• Curiosity around how AI-assisted workflows may improve content production efficiency and artist experience.

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 players' experiences, this could be your role!

Our Perks:

At Riot we strongly believe in work / life balance, and we encourage that with our open paid time off policy, paid parental leave (for both primary and secondary carers) and flexible work schedules to fit your lifestyle. We also believe that work should be fun, we have co-op gaming areas, a play fund so you can broaden and deepen your knowledge of players and community, and all the snacks you would ever need to power through your day (even healthy snacks!). And that’s not all we offer, there’s also:

• Medical Insurance that covers you and your dependents
• Employee Assistance Program
• Wellness fund
• Donation matching of time and money to registered charities
• Learning and Development opportunities

At Riot Games, we put players first. That mission drives every decision in our quest to create games and experiences that make it better to be a player. Whether you’re working directly on a new player-facing experience or you’re supporting the company as a whole, everyone at Riot is part of our mission. And just like in our games, we’re better when we work together. Our goal is to create collaborative teams where you are empowered to bring your unique perspective everyday. If that sounds like the kind of place you want to work, we’re looking forward to your application.