Senior Technical Artist
At Moon Beast Productions, we’re expanding our talented team to pioneer the next wave of genre-defining ARPGs. We are looking for a top-notch Senior Technical Artist who can bridge the gap between art and technology. You will play a key role in building our top-down “isometric” fantasy game by enhancing its aesthetic appeal, graphics capabilities, and technical performance.
As an integral part of the Art Department, your expertise will help optimize our art pipelines and solve complex technical art challenges, with a particular focus on our real-time procedural environments. Our team is a close-knit collective that is deeply passionate about ARPGs, and we’re excited to integrate a creative professional who is eager to innovate alongside us!
What you’ll do
Work alongside the art team to provide insight and expertise, facilitating and unlocking new and better techniques and processes from a technical art perspective
Work with environment and character artists to develop processes and techniques for procedurally generated content, such as assets for our advanced character wardrobe system, and for generating procedural environments using our implementation of wave function collapse and other techniques
Work closely with the engineering team to understand the benefits and requirements of our graphics systems, and contribute your expertise to open new possibilities
Act as the liaison between art and code
Help develop, improve, and refine shader, texture, lighting, and overall rendering quality
Assist artists and designers with pre-production prototypes and visual targets
Work with engineers, artists, and designers to identify and improve performance issues
Stay current with state-of-the-industry technical art tools and techniques and proactively manage R&D and recommendations to improve the visuals, tools, art production techniques, and workflow
Develop or facilitate the development of art tools and their ongoing improvement and documentation
Essential hard skills
Proven experience as a Technical Artist in the gaming industry, with a strong portfolio demonstrating excellent creative and relevant technical art expertise (e.g. shader effects, procedurally generated environments, character wardrobe systems, etc)
A deep understanding of the Unity game engine and professional technical art experience shipping a game with it
Completed and shipped several games as a technical artist with noteworthy visuals and/or technical art contributions
In-depth expertise with a functional technical stack of relevant 3D and 2D software packages, including the ability to use applicable scripting for automation (e.g. Maya, Houdini, Blender, Photoshop, Substance Designer). We use Maya for 3D art and animation, you will have discretion over other technical art tools used
Advanced expertise with C#, particularly inside Unity
Expert facility with key technical art concepts such as rendering pipelines, lighting, shader development, post-processing, and animation pipelines
Familiarity and experience with real-time procedural environment generation techniques including 3D tiles, texture and material layers, randomized layouts using constraints and rules, wave function collapse, and marching cubes
Experience and familiarity with real-time compositing and customization systems for characters
Essential soft skills
Comfortable and productive in a remote work environment, with excellent time-management skills and a proactive attitude
Self-motivated and committed to excellence for yourself and the game
Comfortable with iteration, finding the fun, and forging an unexplored path
Committed to collaboration, constructive feedback, and supportive teamwork
Are an earnest problem solver and a solution-bringer
You’re an even better fit if you
Have a passion and love for ARPGs, fantasy characters, settings, and lore
Have experience creating assets for isometric ARPGs or RPGs
Have used and are comfortable with Perforce
What we offer
Competitive compensation and equity
Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance, fully paid for the employee and their family
401(k) with 100% employer matching up to 6% of salary
11 observed holidays and unlimited vacation PTO policy
Remote-first (with the option to use the office in San Mateo, CA, and other future locations where there are multiple team members)
Diversity
Moon Beast is deeply committed to fostering a diverse environment where employees of all backgrounds can thrive in their personal and professional lives. We value and respect all qualified applicants, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.
We actively encourage and welcome applicants from backgrounds that are typically under-represented within the games industry. Your unique perspective and experience are valuable to us.
Working at Moon Beast
Moon Beast was formed by people with deep connections to the most foundational and influential ARPGs of the past to make even better games for current and future generations of players. There is enormous untapped potential in the ARPG genre. Our unique approach to design and development is a recipe we’ve honed over the years. It’s a mix of proven theory and gut instinct. It combines careful thinking and “throw it in and see what works.”
We plan, iterate, refine, and lean into what’s fun. We listen to the community, watch the players, and strive to give them even better than they hope for.
We love what we do, and there’s nothing we’d rather be doing. Our collective has found and will continue to find each other because of our passion for the work and creativity it takes to make world-class ARPGs.
We are committed to remote-first work (within 3 timezones of PST) and also provide the option to co-work in regions with multiple team members. Currently, we have a small office in San Mateo, CA, for folks living in the Bay Area.