[Hiring] Senior Unity Technical Artist @Seismic Squirrel

Role Description

We are looking for a creative and resourceful Senior Unity Technical Artist experienced working in a professional videogame development environment using Unity. They are a logical and systemic thinker with an iterative approach to development, someone with a collaborative spirit, excellent communication skills, and an enthusiasm for RPG and turn-based videogames. The ideal candidate enjoys working with talented artists, designers, writers, engineers, and management, with a drive to create a beautiful and immersive gameplay experience.

This is a remote position which requires regular team collaboration online during our company's core work hours (9:30 AM – 4:30 PM Pacific), attending relevant meetings (e.g. daily scrums, sprint planning and retrospectives, and cross-departmental collaboration). Occasional evening calls should be expected for collaboration with overseas vendors. The option to convert to full-time employee may be available to ideal candidates, depending on their location, skills, fit, project needs and schedule, and timing. H-1B transfers and sponsorships are not available at this time.

Quests

• Create and integrate 2D artwork, integrating layers, transparency, and parallax effects.
• Create and integrate 3D models, including vehicles, environment objects, props, and textures.
• Create and integrate 2D and 3D VFX, materials, shaders, and animations.
• Handle cameras, lighting and reflections, set dressing, particles, surfaces, rigging, and physics.
• Optimize and profile visual elements to ensure suitable frame rates and load times.
• Provide interesting and effective visual solutions for challenging art requirements.
• Prototype new visual concepts.
• Work with the art and narrative teams to ensure that artwork accurately reflects the game's visual design and themes.
• Troubleshoot art problems within our videogames.
• Mentor other artists as they expand their technical art skills.
• Educate and explain technical art concerns to the rest of the development team.
• Actively collaborate with the rest of the development team, openly communicating progress and problems, helping us to set realistic project timelines and expectations.
• Participate in internal game testing and feedback from an artistic perspective.
• Help to create and maintain core technical documentation.
• Balance and prioritize tasks to meet deadlines, working within agreed timeframes and budgets.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience as a technical artist working in professional videogame development.
• Experienced through the full lifecycle of videogame development from start to finish: concept, design, prototyping, programming, content creation, testing, optimization, launch, support.
• Deeply understands perspective and lighting.
• Able to work within an established artistic style.
• Familiar with technical artistry best practices, design patterns, and unit testing.
• Understands Unity, its render pipelines, and how it interacts with various forms of art.
• Excellent problem-solving skills, resourceful, able to find solutions when needed.
• Enthusiastic for quality gameplay and familiar with the art styles of many games and genres, past and present.
• Strong self-discipline, motivated, a self-starter with a drive for excellence.
• Organized, detail-oriented, able to work fast and loose or carefully with quality when each is needed.
• Courteous and patient, able to work effectively with people across disciplines and personality types.
• Adaptable: The job can change according to the needs at hand and requires wearing various hats.
• Skilled at working remotely using various collaboration tools.
• Possesses strong written, visual, and verbal English language communication and presentation skills.
• Passionate for the videogame industry and a desire to grow within it.
• Understands source control and project branching strategies.
• Experienced working with professional art tools (e.g. Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, 3ds Max, Blender, Adobe Substance Painter).
• Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel, and Visio.
• Passionate to learn new tools and technologies.

Bonus Points

• Has strong 3D modeling and texturing skills, understanding how to work in a 3D space.
• Able to create full orthographic views of object assets for use by 3D modelers.
• Experienced using ZBrush.
• Skilled in scripting for enhancing and automating tools (e.g. Python, Lua).
• Understands UI design.
• Located in one of our hub metros: Seattle, Los Angeles, Edmonton.

Benefits

• Pay Rate: $55-70 USD per hour – Depends on skills and experience.
• Job Type: Contract-to-Hire.
• Portfolio Required: All applicants must submit a portfolio representing their artwork.