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Lead Technical Artist (Unannounced project)

Job Overview

Based in Guildford, DPS Games is looking for an exceptionally skilled Lead Technical Artist, to guide the creation and improvement of the art production pipeline for an unannounced AAA free-to-play game.

You’ll naturally be a hardworking, self-motivated team player with a good sense of humour, who can integrate seamlessly into our team and studio culture, be able to work closely with the Art Director and Art Production Director, and to champion the needs and requirements of the art team across every discipline.

You’ll be passionate about art production pipelines, asset management, and organizational file structures and naming conventions. You’ll be championing them with the art leads and enforcing them through a mix of reviews and validation tech, as well as ensuring that all art production flows through the Tech Art infrastructure.

You’ll bring your excellent verbal and written skills, with the ability to take critique and give feedback to external partners, as well as fully participating in group discussions.

In this position you’ll be working within a multidisciplinary team of developers in a global community and will have the ability to both share your hard-earned knowledge and continue to develop your skill set by learning from your teammates.

Reports To

• The Lead Technical Artist reports to the Art Production Director.

What will you do?

• Create, improve, and enforce the use of art production tools and pipelines across every art discipline
• Help define Tech requirements by doing Tech Reviews with the Art Leads, and from those, help them come up with well-formulated requests for new tech / shaders
• Question tech requests before they are actioned to ensure that they are asking for the right thing
• Work with the Tech, Tools, and Graphics disciplines to ensure that new requests are appropriately assigned to the right people
• Push the bar on quality for all art production tools and innovate with new tooling
• Work closely with the Art Production Director to ensure that all high-level art goals can be met, and that long-term Tech dependencies are anticipated
• Work closely with the Technical Director to ensure that any impact on the Art department by Tech decisions or changes are anticipated and can be actioned on if necessary
• Manage and guide the Tech Art team and help them develop their skills and career goals

What are we looking for?

• Proven experience with Unreal Engine 4 (or above) with at least one full production cycle behind you
• Proven experience building art production tools for 3ds Max, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Maya
• Expert knowledge of art pipeline and infrastructure development using Python
• Expert knowledge of all industry standard art production tools (Substance, Max, Maya)
• Strong understanding of modern rendering pipelines, with the ability to help art leads prototype shaders in Unreal to serve as an example or prototype for the Graphics team to refine
• Expert understanding of performance optimization techniques and related software, including Renderdoc, Pix, Unreal Insights, and how to turn findings into actionable changes and improvements to the art
• Strong Blueprint scripting experience in Unreal to assist in building editor tooling for the art team
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Strong drive to champion the art team’s interests with other departments
• Motivation to cross discipline lines and identify problems in other areas that might have an impact on the art team
• Strong experience with version control systems (Perforce, Git) and ability to teach the essentials to artists

What additional skills will help you stand out?

• C++ skill with Unreal would be a strong bonus
• Expertise in shader development and creation is not a must but would be a help
• Experience with procedural content generation tools like Houdini Engine

Benefits

Benefits and perks are tailored to the local market and culture. Our benefits in Guildford include:

• 5 weeks of Annual Leave per calendar year
• Dog-friendly office
• Onsite canteen (with an endless supply of snacks and beverages)
• Video game areas, Warhammer painting station, a bespoke D&D table, Adjustable height desks
• Wellbeing perks (Mental Health Days, Dedicated Well-being room, Team of Mental Heath First Aiders, Professional counseling)
• Health Insurance (including family coverage), Life Insurance, Pension contribution
• Career development and education opportunities within the company
• Employee discounts
• Personal Gaming Account
• Company events
• Seniority Awards
• Referral program - you can recommend the best talents to the Company and receive a reward
• Working in one of the main European hubs for mobile game development
• Startup within a company with 25 years of experience on the market
• To learn more about our studio in Guildford, follow this link: https://dpsgames.com/studio