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Senior Technical Artist

Crystal Dynamics, a part of the Square Enix family and the studio behind Marvel’s Avengers and the award-winning Tomb Raider franchise, is constantly on the hunt for top-tier gaming talent worldwide. We pride ourselves on attracting and developing the best talent available to concept, create, and contribute to the most exciting projects in gaming. Our 25-plus years of game development experience, as well as our combined AAA games industry pedigree, has established us as one of best studios to work for today.

Benefits for this full-time position include a competitive salary, 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance options and plenty of days of paid time-off.

Position Summary

Come be a part of the future of Tomb Raider! Crystal Dynamics is seeking a highly qualified Senior Technical Artist with a passion for developing content in the smartest way possible – specifically through the creation and enhancement of flexible content pipelines with a focus on innovation, quality and efficiency. The Senior Technical Artist will also be responsible for improving the tools and pipelines to meet the challenges of our high-fidelity multiplayer experiences. This position will play a significant role in improving and maintaining the production pipelines, optimizing workflows and acting as a Technical Art resource for the team.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

• Works with the Technical Director, and is responsible to evaluate and initiate processes or features needed to improve or streamline production across multiple teams
• Acts as liaison between art, design and programming departments to oversee and enhance the studio’s next generation production pipeline and workflow
• Use scripting languages and custom plug-ins to create art centric toolsets focusing on increasing productivity, aiding workflow and reducing human error
• Communicate and troubleshoot technical art issues with an emphasis on studio wide global solutions
• Assist in educating art staff from a technical, workflow and efficiency standpoint
• Mentor and train other technical artists in studio
• Research and develop software that may assist in improving efficiency and raising the visual quality of the art department
• Build art for testing purposes and develop R&D demonstrations for other teams to use and learn from

Competencies, Knowledge & Skills

• Exceptional problem solving, analytical, organizational skills
• Self-motivated, prioritizes tasks, tracks and delivers technical solutions while managing multiple requests from different departments
• Has a thorough understanding of general game production, and every aspect of the art, animation and design creation process
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present ideas, concepts and approaches to both peers and studio management
• Next generation experience and the capability to foresee future tools needs based on this knowledge
• Expert knowledge of PBR and advanced rendering techniques
• Experience with Substance Designer, Substance Painter, ZBrush, Houdini, Photoshop, Knald, XNormal, and other commonly used packages
• Prior leadership experience a plus

Position Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in games industry with multiple shipped AAA titles – a history of showing progression from art into technical art is great to have
• Experience optimizing a AAA game for multiplayer/online performance at high FPS
• Arts or Game Art degree or equivalent experience
• A history of shipping commercially successful products
• A history of defining pipelines and tools in a similar role
• Proven understanding of all standard art tools and plug-ins in that include Maya, Photoshop, 3DMax, and Perforce
• Knowledge of programming languages such as Python/MEL/HLSL
• Understanding of C/C++ a huge plus
• Must show a portfolio that demonstrates both artistic and technical knowledge

Crystal Dynamics is an EOE and M/F/D/V Employer