Principal Software Engineer, 3D Animation - Unpublished R&D Product

Riot engineers bring deep knowledge of specific technical areas but also value the opportunity to work in a variety of broader domains. As a Principal Software Engineer, you’ll work alongside other engineers to implement technical solutions at a company-wide scale. You’ll collaborate with teams to ensure high quality and stack applicability, and provide other engineers with a clear illustration of extraordinary engineering. As a Principal Software Engineer on our unpublished MMO, you will design, implement, and iterate on animation systems that bring characters to life and empower artists and designers. You will work in a collaborative team alongside technical artists, animators, gameplay engineers, and designers to ensure high-quality character motion is seamlessly integrated into the game experience by delivering scalable, performant, and expressive animation systems. You will report into the Senior Director of Software Engineering. Responsibilities

: • Design and implement scalable and performant real-time animation systems and pipelines tailored for game development • Collaborate closely with animators, technical artists, and designers to empower high-fidelity character performance and interactivity • Contribute to the architecture and technical direction for animation features including state machines, IK systems, and procedural motion • Optimize runtime performance and memory usage of animation systems across platforms • Drive the integration of animation tools with engine features • Lead and participate in technical planning, prototyping, and feature development • Promote best practices in animation engineering and mentor other developers in this specialty • Help evolve content workflows and pipelines to support iteration and scale Required Qualifications: • 8+ years of professional experience as a software engineer in the game industry, with focus on real-time animation systems. • Proficient in C++ and Python, with strong debugging and performance optimization skills • Shipped at least one AAA game title featuring high-quality animation systems • Solid foundation in 3D math • Experience with modern runtime animation techniques - motion matching, runtime rigs, advanced blending techniques • Experience collaborating across disciplines including animation, tech art, and gameplay design • Pragmatic decision-making, strong product sense, and a deep empathy for player experience Desired Qualifications: • Experience working on character-driven games • Prior work on dynamic or procedural animation systems • Experience refining animator workflows and tools in partnership with tech art • Familiarity with working with and extending tools like Maya • Experience with asset pipelines, version control, and data-driven animation architectures • Knowledge of Iris or similar data replication frameworks (optional if applicable) For this role, youll 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!