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Lead Technical Artist - Hearthstone

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Pull up a chair and join us by the hearth! Blizzard Entertainment is seeking an exceptional Lead Technical Artist to join the Hearthstone team.

With 10 Mana Crystals at the ready, y ou will bring your extensive problem-solving experience and leadership skills to help guide development as we support exciting New Ways to Play. Your role is challenging and varied; your domain extends from art tools and pipelines, to prototypes, plugins, and rendering improvements. We will look to you to solve hard problems with knowledge, creativity, and teamwork and to provide technical mentorship and guidance for the technical art team that supports Hearthstone. With a deep understanding of game engines and game creation tools you are a champion for the team’s efforts across internal and external development.

We’re in search of an excellent collaborator who can apply their insight and experience to improve the technology, the process, and the people around them. If that sounds like you, we’d like to talk more!

As a Leader you will:

• Mentor and guide technical artists in areas of expertise and help instill best practices.
• Cultivate other members of the team through direct management of skills, processes, and technical / artistic techniques.
• Engage in broader game production challenges as they relate to design, art and engineering.
• Create and drive the vision and direction of the technical art team.
• Help drive Blizzard wide tech art initiatives.

You bring with you:

• 8+ years of experience as a technical artist, preferably with experience in AAA mobile and/or a live game on PC/Console.
• A results-oriented and collaborative approach to developing tools, prototypes, and features from start to finish.
• A deep understanding of production-level art creation and software including Maya, Photoshop, and other DCC applications.
• Expertise in Python, C# and/or C++ – specifically as it applies to working in DCC applications.
• Experience shipping a AAA product in a tech art leadership role.
• Strong communication skills with a service-oriented, support-focused approach.
• Extensive experience working in a realtime game engine (Unity is a plus).
• Knowledge of how to evaluate performance of a collection of assets in the context of the game is a plus, along with the understanding of how to best communicate and address these issues.
• Experience with Maya API is a plus.

We entrust you with:

• Creating and driving the vision and direction of the technical art team.
• Overseeing the development and maintenance of art pipelines, processes, and workflows, including proprietary tools, software plug-ins, and in game technology.
• Collaborating with art, design, and engineering on improving and automating workflows and ensuring that technical art vision is serving the project’s needs.
• Partnering with other leads and directors to meet visual and technical standards.
• Guiding and helping to implement improvements to both product quality and group productivity.
• Prioritize tasks and develop workflows working alongside other Leads and Production staff.
• Collaborating with engineering to optimize runtime performance without sacrificing artistic integrity.
• Leading the tech art team to support our developers with technical and artistic expertise.
• Becoming a communication bridge between art, design, engineering, and production.
• Drive budgets and performance while ensuring asset build stability.
• Evaluating, driving adoption, and mentoring the art team on new technologies and processes.
• Defining the technical roadmaps and long-term vision for the tech art team.

Blizzard Entertainment is a global company committed to growing our employees along with the business. We offer generous benefits and perks with an eye on providing true work / life balance. We’ve worked hard to foster an intensely collaborative and creative environment, a diverse and inclusive employee culture, and training and opportunity for professional growth. Our people are everything. Our core values are real, and our mission has never changed. We are dedicated to creating the most epic entertainment experiences…ever. Join us!

Blizzard Entertainment is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable law, and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.