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Senior Technical Artist

About Us:

PlayQ is a rapidly growing global entertainment and technology company delivering high-quality mobile titles and innovative game development solutions to a worldwide audience. Our games have been downloaded more than 60 million times across the globe, with millions of users playing every day!

Our dedicated teams, based in downtown Santa Monica, CA, work together to craft the clever, visually stunning, and unforgettable experiences that our players love. Our emphasis on individual leadership means each team member has the opportunity to make a big impact, while our commitment to creative freedom gives them the ability to create whatever they can imagine.

It’s this mindset that has led us to develop our own IP, infuse games with rich storytelling, build our own development tools, and solve the deepest technical challenges - all in the name of disrupting the mobile gaming landscape.

Job Overview:

The Technical Artist will work closely with both Art and Engineering to deliver beautiful visual experiences that are also optimized for performance. The ideal person is detail-oriented with a keen eye for visual quality and a passion for researching new techniques. The Technical Artist will develop and drive art pipelines and workflows in close collaboration with the Art Director and Director of Engineering. Additionally, the Technical Artist will be responsible for delivering new and clever solutions that elevate the visual quality of mobile games.

Responsibilities:

• Establish and promote best practices for game art creation, integration, and optimization
• Act as an interface between Art and Engineering.
• Build custom tools, scripts, and shaders to support art creation efforts.
• Ensure art looks beautiful but also renders efficiently across various devices.
• Create and maintain well-defined technical art and 3D art pipelines across various projects.
• Research or create new methods of pushing visual quality within technical constraints.
• Integrate 3D and 2D assets into Unity while communicating optimization techniques the rest of the art team.
• Document pipeline and tools development processes

Requirements:

• 3-5+ years in a Technical Artist or equivalent role
• BS/BA degree or equivalent
• Strong working knowledge of major content creation tools such as 3ds Max, Maya, Substance
• Comfortable writing scripts and tools for the art pipeline in chosen language
• Strong experience with Unity, including familiarity with popular plugins and tools, asset bundles, profiling and memory management
• Strong profiling and optimization skills, with an emphasis on mobile constraints, budgets, draw call reduction, texture compression, and the ability to communicate problems and suggestions to non-technical artists
• Experience with creating and optimizing scenes, lighting, particle effects, shaders, 3D animations and various visual effects.
• Experience setting up and optimizing production art pipelines and workflows, including source control, integrating branches, validating new content additions, and finding and busting workflow bottlenecks
• Excellent organizational and communication skills.
• A portfolio demonstrating high-quality work

Bonus Points:

• 2+ years experience in at least one 3D specialty (modeling, animating, vfx, etc)
• Experience using C# in Unity to write tools to aid content creation and testing for Unity and to improve inefficiencies in the art pipeline (such as automating asset importing, asset building, budget checks, texture atlasing, enforcing content naming and locations)
• Experience with math and implementation of advanced rendering techniques, such as PBR and tools such as Substance Painter

Perks:

• Competitive compensation and equity options
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life and long term disability insurance
• Flexible time off
• 401K plan with company match
• Stocked kitchen with free snacks and beverages of your choice
• Catered weekly team lunches
• Brand new penthouse office space equipped with outdoor patios offering beachfront views
• Monthly team outings and volunteer opportunities
• Help build and support awesome GAMES. For a living! Who doesn't love games?

Interested? Please get in touch!