Technical Artist

As a Technical Artist, you will collaborate closely with artists, designers, and engineers to achieve project goals by supporting visual content integration, improving workflows, and resolving technical challenges. This role requires a detail-oriented, collaborative individual adept at balancing creative and technical needs in a fast-paced environment, bridging the gap between Art and Engineering to create performant and iterative end-to-end experiences.

Must Have

• Provide technical expertise, advice, and solutions to artists, animators, and riggers.
• Collaborate across departments and with management for quality enhancement and iteration efficiency.
• Research and suggest appropriate tools and processes for projects.
• Independently extract well-defined requirements from creative and artistic briefs.
• Set performance and memory objectives and establish testing methods.
• Understand quality/performance trade-offs and develop solutions.
• Manage multiple concurrent tasks from planning to development and delivery.
• Adhere to and contribute to technical art best practices, processes, pipelines and tools.
• Conduct code and content performance reviews as needed.
• Thoroughly test all work in builds before submission.
• Identify potential risks associated with changes prior to submission to source control.
• Expertise in industry standard DCC tools (Maya, Max, Blender, Substance, Photoshop).
• Proficiency with colour workflows in DCC content creation.
• Capable of creating custom tools in scripts for DCC packages.
• Proficiency working with Unreal, including blueprinting.
• Strong understanding of how to optimize projects for performance.
• Proficient in using performance tools within the engine and on devices.
• Proficient working with version control (Perforce, git or other).
• Experience writing and editing clear technical documentation.
• Strong proficiency in creating and optimising shaders (HLSL or GLSL).
• Capable of planning, designing and implementing solutions to technical art problems.
• Able to communicate technical issues to non-technical team members.

Good to Have

• A passion and willingness to explore new skills and techniques for themselves and any assigned mentees.

Perks & Benefits

• Diverse, creative workplace
• Ongoing education and mentorship opportunities through guilds
• Generous health care
• Time off
• Other benefits
• Safe environment for risk-taking and learning from failures
• Emphasis on collaboration
• Company leadership works for employees

As a Technical Artist, you’ll work closely with artists, designers, and engineers to execute on project goals by supporting visual content integration, improving workflows, and troubleshooting technical challenges. You are detail-oriented, collaborative, and adept at balancing creative and technical needs in a fast-paced environment. You’ll be bridging the gap between Art and Engineer to create a cohesive end to end experience that is performant and iterative.

Magnopus's studio postings are made in advance of work anticipated to be awarded. Hires cannot be made until contracts are awarded. In some instances, contracts may not be awarded which could delay or preempt the interview process. We appreciate your patience.

Responsibilities

• Providing technical expertise, advice, and solutions to artists, animators, and riggers as required
• Collaborating across departments and with management to devise comprehensive solutions for quality enhancement and iteration efficiency
• Researching and suggesting appropriate tools and processes for projects
• Independently extracting well-defined requirements from creative and artistic briefs
• Setting performance and memory objectives and establishing testing methods
• Understanding quality / performance trade-offs and developing solutions that maximise both
• Managing multiple concurrent tasks from planning to development and delivery
• Adhering to and contributing to technical art best practices, processes, pipelines and tools
• Conducting code and content performance reviews as needed
• Thoroughly testing all work in builds before submission
• Identifying potential risks associated with changes prior to submission to source control
• Understanding roles in a scrum environment and assisting in the definition of technical art tasks
• Attending daily standups, breaking down assigned tasks and providing estimates during sprint planning or other planning exercises
• Proactively identifying potential project challenges and proposing feasible solutions
• Creating and maintaining comprehensive technical documentation as needed

Required Qualifications

• Expertise in one or more industry standard DCC tools (Maya, Max, Blender, Substance, Photoshop, etc) for creating 2D and 3D asset
• Proficient with colour workflows used in DCC content creation
• Capable of creating custom tools in scripts to automate fundamental tasks within one or more DCC packages
• Proficiency working with Unreal, including blueprinting
• Strong understanding of how to optimize projects for performance
• Proactive in preempting and addressing performance limitations on target devices
• Proficient in using performance tools within the engine and on devices to identify performance bottlenecks
• Proficient working with version control for all work (Perforce, git or other), including work in progress
• Experience writing and editing clear technical documentation
• Strong proficiency in creating and optimising through the development of shaders, with a deep understanding of HLSL or GLSL
• Capable of planning, designing and implementing solutions to a broad range of technical art problems
• Able to communicate technical issues to non-technical team members
• A passion and willingness to explore new skills and techniques for themselves and any assigned mentees

Salaries offered are based on candidate experience, internal equity, and the level at which they are hired.

Magnopus is an experience focused technology company founded by a team of Oscar-winning artists, designers, and engineers from games, films, and other unusual places. We’re passionate about creating rich experiences that unite the physical and digital worlds.

Because we’re building the future, we endeavor to create a diverse, creative workplace where people from many perspectives collaborate across disciplines to create amazing things together. We invest in our employee's progression with ongoing education and mentorship opportunities through their guilds, and support their happiness and productivity through generous health care, time off, and other benefits.

We try to foster a safe environment where we can take risks, and learn from our failures. While we value individual talents, we favor collaboration more. We believe that the leadership of the company works for the employees, not the other way around. We feel strongly that our employees guide who we are as a company and the work we create, so we look for characteristics of curiosity, empathy, respect, honesty, and courage in every candidate.

Though we’ve delivered a lot of crazy stuff, here are a few you can check out at home:

• Mission: ISS
• Disney Pixar Coco VR
• Blade Runner 2049: Memory Lab
• The Lion King - Virtual Production
• Elixir

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process - for example, to transcribe interviews and generate summaries. These tools are not used to review applications or analyse resumes, and they do not replace human judgement. All hiring decisions are made by people. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.