Senior Technical Artist

Enjoy being the middle child in the family? Like being the only one that understands both art- and engineer-speak? Are you willing to take up the shield for art when papa engineer is always saying “no”?

As Senior Technical Artist, you will use your deep understanding of art content creation and your strong technical knowledge to bridge the gap between the artistic and programming teams. Acting as an interpreter and problem-solver, your role will be to strike the perfect balance between achieving the artistic vision and respecting technical constraints.

The ideal candidate has an understanding of polygon, texture, and memory budgets. As well as UI setup, implementation, and optimizations, animation, shader and material creation, VFX, programming, design concerns, and production schedules and project goals. They are able to identify and create tools that improve efficiency and support optimal workflow.

As a part of the application process, you will be expected to provide a portfolio or demo reel of work and may be asked to complete an art test.

Qualifications:

• 3+ years professional experience in game development
• Shipped mobile or AAA game title, especially with work on the project from inception through completion
• Ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical parties
• Attention to detail, with meticulous and organized working habits
• Ability to multi-task and to adapt easily to change
• Experience in a full digital art content creation pipeline (high and low-poly modeling, unwrapping, baking, texturing, and animation), ideally in the video game industry
• Knowledge and Interest in the following tech-art areas: Shaders, VFX, Scripting, Lighting, Rendering and Post-Effects, SFX, Rigging, and Physics
• Skills and experience in software development (preferably in C#), as well as Unity game engine experience
• Proven technical skills in performance, optimization, and implementation
• Solid scripting skills (Maxscript, Melscript, Python, etc.) with Maya or 3DS Max experience
• Mobile game development experience
• Advanced Unity game engine experience
• Passion for games and knowledge of the games industry

Responsibilities:

• Support content production art teams in achieving top-quality results
• Develop technical tools and solutions to solve performance issues while executing artistic and game vision
• Optimize memory and game performance by realizing artistic and gameplay intentions within project constraints
• Identify and develop art pipeline optimizations and tools for new and existing production workflow
• Create technical benchmarks to be used in production, implement optimizations and monitor the performance of the game
• Implement technical art features with the help of the programming team
• Cooperate with, and support, other programmers and members of a multidisciplinary team
• Actively seek opportunities to improve the game(s) performance
• Offer technical support to the art team with day-to-day production issues
• Create and maintain technical documentation
• Share best practices and new tools with the other artists and programmers

Who we are – Tempo Games Studio:

Tempo Games is a new start-up games studio in production on its first major title. The Bazaar is an infinitely replayable, global, and free-to-play strategy game for all platforms. In this genre-bending title, players take the role of an enterprising adventurer on a quest for wealth and glory in an intergalactic marketplace.

Tempo is seeking to expand its team and hire best-in-class talent. The existing team has collectively delivered more than 100 games, events, and marketing campaigns with the largest companies on the globe, including Amazon, Microsoft, Nintendo, Epic, Sony, Activision Blizzard, Riot Games, Take-Two Interactive, Tencent, and ByteDance.

Tempo fosters a culture of innovation, inclusion, and passion among its team and fans to deliver impactful experiences that shape the way we all create, entertain, and play. We invest everything into our staff, culture, and product.

Compensation and benefits:

Tempo has listed the pay ranges it in good faith expects to pay applicants for this role, as of the time of this posting. Salary offered will be determined based on numerous relevant business and candidate factors including, for example, education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, domain knowledge, interview performance, position level, geographic location, and business or organizational needs.

In the United States, the standard annual base pay range for this role is $100,000 and up, depending on the above-mentioned factors. This base pay range is for the U.S. and is not applicable to locations outside of the U.S.

The salary is just one part of the overall compensation at Tempo. We also offer a package of benefits including discretionary paid time off, paid time off for federal holidays, medical/dental/vision insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, and tax-advantaged 401(k) accounts to regular full-time employees.