Note: This can can be in the Bay Area onsite or 100% remote

We are actively looking for a Senior Technical Artist responsible for tools and pipelines for game asset development. We are looking for an individual with experience in procedural game assets, VFX, and Houdini Engine for Unreal. You will collaborate with artists, engineers and designers to provide the best possible experience and value to our players. You would be challenged to take the traditional art pipeline and elevate it next-gen workflows.

Our client’s next game is heavily combat-focused, so the ideal candidate must adore 3D action combat games and action RPGs. They currently have multiple 3rd person games in process.

What are the responsibilities for this role?

• Work daily with production, art and design teams to formulate, create, and implement production ready world building solutions within Houdini for export to Unreal Engine 4
• Proactively seek out inefficiencies and problems in existing content pipelines and identify potential solutions
• Improve and enhance tools/processes throughout the project cycle
• Assist engineers and designers in researching and developing new game features
• Create and maintain documentation of developed tools and processes
• Drive and maintain performance goals and optimizations in tool development
• Work to improve the tools artists use outside of the game engine, such as Substance Designer/Painter, 3ds Max, Maya, ZBrush, baking, Hi to Low poly, UV’ing, etc
• Help standardize the workflow and pipelines for asset creation, procedural and traditional methods

What are the minimum requirements for the position?

• Thorough knowledge of Houdini Asset and VAT, VEX, DOP, SOP-based tool development for games, and Houdini Engine
• Strong understanding of the performance implications of open world development on consoles and PCs
• 5+ years of experience developing stable and useful tools for asset development support, with two shipped titles
• 3+ years developing tools and assets in the game industry with one shipped title
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to effectively balance the needs of game design, art and programming

What are some additional brownie points?

• Experience using 3ds Max, Maya, zBrush, and Substance Designer or Painter
• Experience with other game engines, such as Frostbite, Unity, etc.
• Experience in Character pipeline and Photogrammetry
• Experience developing for Blueprints, Niagara, Cascade and Shaders in Unreal Engine 4
• Experience with shading languages (HLSL/CG/etc.)
• Be able to work comfortably with common scripting languages (MAXScript, MEL script, Python, etc.) Portfolio Requirements
• Samples, demonstrations, or documentation of tools pipelines developed to overcome development challenges