Director, Art Direction - Unpublished R&D Product

Riot Games; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 207,000 - 289,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Life insurance

Parental leave

401k with company match

Open PTO

Flexible work schedules

Job summary

Riot Games in Los Angeles is seeking an experienced Art Director to shape the visual direction of a new project, leading with vision and partnering with Creative Direction, game leadership, and external partners.

You will translate creative direction into a distinctive, production-ready visual identity that strengthens character appeal and gameplay readability, while mentoring art teams and balancing artistic ambition with production realities.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in game development with 8+ years leading art teams.
• Experience as Art Director or senior decision maker on at least one shipped 3D game.
• Proven ability to deliver visually strong characters in model and animation.
• Strong understanding of stylized visuals pipelines and production constraints.
• Portfolio showing artistic judgment and variety across styles.
• Experience with modern game engines (Unreal, Unity).

Responsibilities

• Steward the game’s visual identity from concept through production.
• Translate creative direction into clear visual standards, production practices, and scalable art workflows.
• Drive visual quality, appeal, and gameplay readability across all player-facing art.
• Apply deep expertise in art style across art, animation, VFX, and character-driven experiences.
• Balance artistic ambition with technical requirements and production realities.
• Build, lead, and mentor high-performing internal and external art teams.
• Direct co-development partners, vendors, and distributed creative talent to deliver high-quality work.
• Partner across design, narrative, audio, engineering, product, and IP to ensure art strengthens the player experience.
• Provide clear visual feedback through reviews, paintovers, references, and development guidance.
• Maintain deep awareness of the art style, creative influences, and evolving player expectations.

Skills

Art direction

Team leadership

3D game development

Unreal/Unity engines

Visual storytelling

Art pipelines

Job description

Art Directors at Riot drive the quality and performance of their team, establishing direction and goals that provide clarity and focus. Your scope of responsibilities include leading with vision, strategic partnership across the game, a deep understanding of audience resonance, overall team culture and performance, growth of your direct reports, and directing your team on successful execution of your vision and strategy.

As an Art Director an unpublished R&D product, you will help bring the game’s visual direction to life in a new game for players around the world. You will translate our creative direction into a distinctive, emotionally compelling, production-ready visual identity that supports gameplay, strengthens character appeal, and meets the craft bar players expect from Riot. You will partner closely with Creative Direction, Game Leadership, cross-disciplinary teams, and external partners to translate the game’s visual ambition into a cohesive, art direction.

Responsibilities

• Steward the game’s visual identity from concept through production
• Translate creative direction into clear visual standards, production practices, and scalable art workflows
• Drive visual quality, appeal, and gameplay readability across all player-facing art
• Apply deep expertise in the art style across art, animation, VFX, visual storytelling, and character-driven experiences
• Balance artistic ambition with technical requirements and production realities
• Build, lead, and mentor high-performing internal and external art teams
• Direct co-development partners, vendors, and distributed creative talent to deliver consistently high-quality work
• Partner across design, narrative, audio, engineering, product, and IP to ensure art strengthens the player experience
• Provide clear visual feedback through reviews, paintovers, references, and development guidance
• Maintain deep awareness of the art style, creative influences, and evolving player expectations

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience developing games, with 8+ years leading art teams
• Experience as an Art Director or key artistic decision maker on at least one shipped 3D game
• Experience delivering games with strong character appeal in both model and animation
• Strong understanding of the pipelines, production techniques, and technical constraints required to deliver stylized visuals in games
• Strong artistic judgment across character design, composition, shape language, color, lighting, animation, VFX, and gameplay readability
• Experience balancing visual quality against technical, production, platform, and team-size constraints
• Experience building, leading, mentoring, and aligning art teams across cross-functional game development
• Experience directing external vendors or distributed art teams
• Champion of healthy creative processes that support iteration, alignment, scalable production, and strong artistic quality
• Experience leveraging emerging technologies and workflows, to accelerate visual development while maintaining artistic quality, authorship, and creative integrity
• A portfolio demonstrating strong artistic judgment, visual clarity, compositional skill, and stylistic range
• Experience developing games in modern game engines (i.e. Unreal, Unity, etc)

Desired Qualifications

• Experience developing art direction for live-service, multiplayer, or other technically constrained games
• Experience with 3D games that place high demands on character appeal, animation, VFX, camera, gameplay readability, or combat clarity
• Working knowledge of stylized rendering techniques, VFX, animation, and visual clarity for gameplay

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise and a collaborative spirit that prioritizes the delight of players. We will look at your past studies and experience, but for this role, we also look for dedicated people with a personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players' experiences, this is the role for you!

Our Perks

Riot focuses on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy and other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner, and children, and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.

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.

It’s our policy to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and members of Riot Games, Inc. Riot Games makes reasonable accommodations for handicapped and disabled Rioters and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, handicap, veteran status, marital status, criminal history, or any other category protected by applicable federal and state law. We consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including the California Fair Chance Act, the City of Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, and the Washington Fair Chance Act.

Duties

Per the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, the following core duties may create a basis for disqualifying candidates with relevant criminal histories:

• Safeguarding confidential and sensitive Company data
• Communication with others, including Rioters and third parties such as vendors, and/or players, including minors
• Accessing Company assets, secure digital systems, and networks
• Ensuring a safe interactive environment for players and other Rioters

These duties are directly related to essential operations, safety, trust, and compliance obligations within our organization. Please note that job duties may evolve based on business needs and additional responsibilities may be assigned as necessary to maintain operational efficiency and security.

(Los Angeles Only) Base salary range between $206,700.00 - $289,000.00 USD + incentive compensation + equity + 401K with company match + medical, dental, vision, and life insurance + short and long-term disability + open PTO.