Engine
Unreal Engine
One World, Every Game
The MMO is not a new universe, it is the one you already play in. Every game Riot ships lives on one map, and the board describes building the next way to explore it.
Thirteen regions are already mapped, illustrated, and voiced, each with its own factions, heroes, and history.
Demacia
Noxus
Ionia
Piltover
Zaun
Freljord
Shurima
Ixtal
Bilgewater
Targon
Shadow Isles
Bandle City
VoidThe Tech Tell: Unreal Engine
The tech tell
Built on Unreal Engine
The listings name Unreal Engine by title, alongside massively multiplayer scale and a live server fleet with people already on call. That reads like a running game, not a pitch deck.
Open MMO Roles
As of today there are 6 open MMO roles on Riot’s careers board, across Los Angeles, USA, Sydney, Australia. Every one is tagged to the unannounced Runeterra MMO. Here’s the full set, and what each tells us.
Senior Technical Animator - Unpublished R&D Product
Location: Los Angeles, USA
As a Senior Technical Artist (Technical Animation) , you’ll define and maintain the systems that bring our characters and creatures to life including complex animation state machines, layered interactions, and IK-driven behaviors in our upcoming MMO.
What it signals: the multiplayer netcode/server backend is being built. View posting.
Read the actual posting
What you’d do
- Build and maintain complex animation state machines, layered animation systems, and override logic supporting split-body for player characters, NPCs, creatures, and props.
- Collaborate with animators, character tech artists, and designers to develop efficient, believable, and tech-friendly animation flows.
- Define best practices for animation setup while owning the debuggability, documentation, maintainability, and long-term health of animation blueprints and graphs within Unreal Engine.
- Partner with engineers to build and evolve animation runtime systems and debugging workflows.
- Drive optimization efforts across animation assets and graphs to meet performance and memory targets.
- Collaborate with cross-discipline partners to ensure character systems scale effectively across massive multiplayer environments.
What they want
- 8+ years of professional experience as a technical animator or technical artist in games or related industries.
- Deep expertise with Unreal Engine animation workflows, including complex Animation Blueprints, state machines, blend spaces, and layered animation systems.
- Proven experience designing scalable, reusable animation systems for large-scope character setups, including players, NPCs, and creatures.
- Strong art foundation with a deep understanding of animation principles, anatomy, and motion.
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate across art, design, and engineering disciplines
- Experience with Unreal Control Rig and Sequencer
Manager, Software Engineering, Automation & Build Systems, Unpublished R&D Product
Location: Sydney, Australia
At Riot, we believe in putting players first. Our Sydney-based team contributes to the unpublished R&D Product, collaborating globally to build next-generation features and technology. Whether focused on automation, performance, tools, or build systems, we create the foundations for great developer and player experiences.
What it signals: the multiplayer netcode/server backend is being built. View posting.
Read the actual posting
What you’d do
- Lead and mentor a team of 2 to 6 engineers through all phases of product development.
- Work across time zones to set the technical direction, in partnership with product and discipline leads, driving clarity and alignment on priorities.
- Design and implement solutions for large scale automation and build tooling across a distributed network of servers.
- Lead architecture requirements, technical design, and hands-on implementation across relevant systems, shaping the team’s technical direction and standards.
What they want
- Grow the capabilities of the team through coaching, career development, and hiring.
- Foster an engineering culture grounded in player-first, collaboration, inclusion, autonomy and best practices.
- Identify, interview, and hire software engineers to scale the team and ensure consistency in excellence between global teams.
- Work with the Core Tech Engineering Manager in Los Angeles to plan, roadmap and deliver on the needs for content creation, stability, and testing.
- Troubleshoot live service issues as part of an on-call rotation.
- 6+ years of development experience as a software engineer, including shipping one or more games or products on large code bases that span a range of platforms and tools.
Senior Technical Artist, Tools & Pipeline, Unpublished R&D Product
Location: Sydney, Australia
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.
What it signals: the engineering backbone (build systems, infra) is scaling, a sign of a real, growing codebase. View posting.
Read the actual posting
What they want
- Define and level up the end-to-end workflow for our many creative disciplines, such as Character Art, Animation, Environment Art, Audio, and VFX
- Collaborate with Technical Art and Engineering partners to support artist needs, including evaluating tools and workflows, and communicating requirements for production.
- Help stand up and maintain scalable artist tools and workflows to support multiple teams in parallel production streams.
- Provide technical support to artists working from our art workflows, collecting data to further improve the tools they are using, making recommendations and improvements where necessary
- Be an active member of the Tech Art community within Riot, participate in craft-focused meetings and events, and actively mentor for other Technical Artists in their craft
- Build close relationships with artists and engineers to understand needs, identify pain points, and help guide workflow, pipeline, and system improvements.
Staff Software Engineer - Automation & Build Systems - Unpublished R&D Product (Sydney-Based; Relocation & Visa Sponsorship Provided)
Location: Sydney, Australia
At Riot, we believe in putting players first. Our Sydney-based team contributes to the unpublished R&D Product. A highly anticipated Riot MMO, collaborating globally to build next-generation features and technology.
What it signals: the multiplayer netcode/server backend is being built. View posting.
Read the actual posting
What they want
- Design and implement solutions for large scale automation and build tooling across a distributed network of servers.
- Lead and contribute to architecture requirements, technical design, and implementation across relevant systems, helping deliver stability to players and shaping the team’s technical direction and standards.
- Partner with technical leadership in Sydney & Los Angeles to develop solutions, and collaborate closely with design to deliver high-performance systems that maximize player enjoyment.
- Promote best practices and share expertise related to build & automation systems, while mentoring engineers in your areas of specialization.
- Work collaboratively across multiple timezones to gather requirements, plan technical initiatives, and consistently deliver robust, scalable, and performant systems.
- Work with the Core Tech Leadership in Los Angeles to architect & deliver on the needs for content creation, stability, and testing.
Senior Animator - Unpublished R&D Product
Location: Los Angeles, USA
As a member of the Animation team, you bring champions to life through classic animation principles and body mechanics. You will create high quality animations for a diverse and rapidly growing universe, including bipeds, quadrupeds, and creatures.
What it signals: the multiplayer netcode/server backend is being built. View posting.
Read the actual posting
What they want
- Create high-quality gameplay animation for playable characters, creatures, and others with a focus on locomotion and creature behavior.
- Create responsive, stylized animation that delivers satisfying gameplay and memorable character performances.
- Implement, iterate, and polish gameplay animation in the game engine
- Work within state machines and gameplay systems to support responsive gameplay and reliable animation behavior.
- Partner with designers to prototype and iterate on gameplay animation, using playtesting and feedback to improve responsiveness, readability, and feel.
- Collaborate with technical artists and engineers to improve animation workflows and runtime behavior.
Principal Software Engineer, Rendering - Unpublished R&D Product
Location: Los Angeles, USA
Riot engineers bring deep knowledge of specific technical areas but also value the opportunity to work in a variety of broader domains. Riot engineers bring deep knowledge of specific technical areas but also value the opportunity to work in a variety of broader domains.
What it signals: the multiplayer netcode/server backend is being built. View posting.
Read the actual posting
What they want
- Be the rendering expert of the team
- Help build the engine technology that powers one of our new AAA games
- Deeply understand how rendering systems are interlinked and proactively work across departments to shepherd best practices and advise on all things rendering-related
- Work collaboratively with the art team to help realize the overall vision of the game
- Work to monitor and increase the performance of the game client
- Build, implement, and improve tools for artists across multiple platforms
What the Board Signals
Read together, the current board points to:
- The team is expanding.
- The engineering backbone (build systems, infra) is scaling, a sign of a real, growing codebase.
None of this is a release date, but it’s the difference between "still concepting" and "actively building." Check the live board yourself: riotgames.com careers → MMO.
