About the Role

We are looking for a Technical Artist to bridge the gap between art and technology in our mobile game development team. You will work closely with artists, designers, and programmers to develop stylized shaders for characters and visual effects, optimize visual assets, and improve art production workflows in Unity.

The ideal candidate combines strong artistic sensibility with hands-on technical expertise, understands the performance constraints of mobile platforms, and enjoys finding creative solutions to technical challenges.

Position: Senior Technical Artist

Game Project: Join our talented team to work on a 3D simulation mobile game!

Report to: Lead 3D Artist

Hiring Level: Experienced

Start Date: ASAP
Location: 988 West Broadway, Vancouver, BC V5Z 1K7 (Fully on-site)

Salary Range: $80,000 - $100,000 annually before tax, negotiable and commensurate with skills and experience

Hiring Process

1. Resume and portfolio/showreel review
2. Art test to demonstrate your skills and approach to the role
3. Interviews to meet the team and discuss your experience and qualifications
4. Professional reference check conducted with your consent
5. Formal offer subject to satisfactory reference check results and internal approval

Employment Terms

• Less than 1 year of relevant experience: Initial 3-month contract
• 1-3 years of relevant experience: Initial 1-year contract
• More than 3 years of relevant experience: Permanent position

Contract durations are subject to individual assessment and may vary based on specific qualifications and experience.

Job Responsibilities

Art Integration and Production

• Collaborate with artists and designers to develop and implement stylized visuals for characters, environments, and visual effects in Unity.
• Prepare, integrate, and optimize 2D and 3D assets for real-time mobile game development.
• Set up, refine, and maintain materials, textures, lighting, visual effects, and reusable prefabs.
• Polish and troubleshoot art assets in Unity, ensuring visual consistency and technical quality throughout production.

Shader Development and Rendering

• Design, create, and maintain stylized shaders and materials for characters and visual effects using Amplify Shader Editor or Unity Shader Graph.
• Develop custom shader effects, including distortion, blend modes, vertex displacement, dissolve, and UV animation, to achieve specific artistic styles.
• Collaborate with artists to develop and refine the visual appearance of characters and FX while maintaining mobile performance budgets.
• Review and optimize rendering performance, addressing issues related to draw calls, transparency, overdraw, shader complexity, and texture memory usage.

Technical Support and Workflow Improvement

• Support artists with Unity workflows, asset setup, import settings, materials, shaders, and other technical requirements.
• Collaborate with artists, designers, and programmers to identify and resolve art-related technical issues.
• Identify and implement improvements to art workflows, asset pipelines, and production processes.
• Research, evaluate, and test new tools and techniques to improve visual quality and production efficiency.
• Provide technical guidance to artists and develop practical solutions that balance artistic goals, technical constraints, and production schedules.
• Proactively identify and address technical challenges while meeting project deadlines.
• Perform additional tasks as assigned by the team.

Requirements

Professional Experience

• 4+ years of professional experience in Technical Art or a related role within the mobile game industry.
• Strong knowledge of Unity and real-time 3D production workflows.
• Good understanding of the 3D art production pipeline, including modeling, texturing, animation, and asset integration.

Shaders and Rendering

• Hands-on experience designing and developing stylized shaders for characters and real-time visual effects using Amplify Shader Editor or Unity Shader Graph.
• Strong knowledge of shaders, materials, textures, lighting, and real-time rendering.
• Practical understanding of Unity rendering optimization techniques, including draw calls, the SRP Batcher, and GPU instancing, along with their use cases and limitations.
• Understanding of common mobile rendering costs, including transparency and overdraw, shader complexity, and texture memory usage.
• Experience optimizing game assets, shaders, and visual effects for performance while maintaining visual quality.

Technical and Collaborative Skills

• Experience troubleshooting technical issues related to art assets and their implementation in Unity.
• Experience collaborating with artists, designers, and programmers to resolve technical challenges.
• Experience using AI tools in art production or to improve workflows.
• Strong communication and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to balance artistic requirements with technical limitations and production deadlines.
• Proactive approach to identifying problems and implementing practical solutions.
• Regularly plays mobile games and has a good understanding of mobile game visuals and player experience.
• Legally authorized to work in Canada without requiring employer sponsorship.

Bonus to Have

• Experience working on stylized or cartoon-style mobile games.
• Experience developing tools, scripts, or editor extensions to support art production.
• Ability to write and modify custom shaders directly in HLSL/ShaderLab for Unity's Universal Render Pipeline (URP).
• Experience creating procedural textures for visual effects using Substance Designer.
• Experience with Maya, 3ds Max, Substance Designer, or Substance Painter.

What We Offer

• 13 days of accrued paid vacation and 5 paid sick days annually.
• Comprehensive health, dental, vision, and prescription coverage after 3 months.
• Active Living Benefit and Training/Development fee reimbursement after 3 months.
• Paid statutory holidays.
• Paid holiday closure between Christmas and New Year's.
• RRSP matching after 1 year.
• Monthly commuter allowance after 3 months.
• Monthly team lunches.
• Festival bonuses and gifts.
• Gifts for employees' children.
• Employee referral bonuses.

Office & Team Perks

• Bike parking at the office and company-paid parking.
• Regular working hours from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., including a paid lunch break.
• On-site entertainment facilities and gym.
• Casual dress code.
• Employee discounts at nearby restaurants and cafés through company partnerships.
• Employee-led clubs, social activities, and community initiatives supported by company funding.
• Snacks and drinks provided.

Join Our Team

If you are a creative artist with a passion for translating a vision into compelling artwork, we invite you to join our team and contribute to our exciting projects.

Please submit your portfolio along with your application. We look forward to seeing your work!