Senior Technical Artist (Visual Effects)

About the job Jar of Sparks is a new first party game development studio as a part of NetEase games. Founded by award-winning game developers. We have a clear goal to make games that we love and create the next generation of narrative driven action games. We are building a team first studio to bring back the fun in world class game development. Location: Remote and Hybrid work to Redmond WA Who We Are At Jar of Sparks, our goal is to build great games that we want to play and our players love. We believe the best way to accomplish this is through building great teams that work together on a common vision. Central to our team vision is leaning into experimentation that we can learn and grow from. While we are headquartered in Redmond, Washington, we support full remote and hybrid models for development. We want the most talented teammates wherever they call home. We believe a diverse team with varied perspectives make us a better studio and will help us make better games. If you believe you can bring a new spark to the studio and expand our point of view, we look forward to talking more. Your Role The Senior Technical Artist owns the best practices for building technically sound and performant procedural art and FX. You will partner with multiple disciplines to define technical solutions and best practices for content production. With Houdini gaining an expanding foothold into art and VFX production. You will help spearhead its expansion through the Jar of Sparks pipeline. Key Responsibilities Together with artists identify workflows for the procedural creation of both small and large-scale environments and assets. Analyze current pipelines and identify how to improve them with procedural tools. Design, develop, and implement advanced procedural content creation systems using Houdini to generate high-quality environments, textures, and assets that align with the project goals and technical constraints. Collaborate with technical team and content teams to drive the integration of Houdini HDA tools into the Unreal pipeline, ensuring seamless integration between artists and the procedural tools that empower them to create performant, AAA content. Able to work with the Chaos physics system to create advanced physics and collision systems. This includes everything from advanced destructible systems to simple collision creation HDAs for dense Nanite meshes. Help simulating a wide range of destruction, VFX, and epic in-game scenarios. Define, document, build and maintain tools to improve the Houdini and Physics pipeline. Be the main area of support for Houdini and Chaos content and training for the studio. Basic Qualifications: Minimum 5+ years of experience or shipped at least one AAA game title in Unreal as a Technical Artist. Solid knowledge of procedural systems and tools (Unreal engine blueprints, Houdini and equivalent). Strong 3D modeling background with experience building shippable assets or environments for games (modeling, UVs, texturing). Exceptional verbal and written communication skills. The patience and positivity required to troubleshoot big and small problems with artists, and team members who may be less technical than yourself. Strong knowledge of asset creation pipelines and workflows. Experience partnering across disciplines including art and engineering to gather requirements and guide the development of proprietary art. Preferred Qualifications: Bachelor's degree in Art, Animation, Computer Science, a similar field, or equivalent work experience. Experience working with Unreal Engine. Experience working with tools to capture and analyze GPU and CPU frame performance. Advanced proficiency in Blueprint, visual scripting, or general scripting environments. Willingness to travel to the Puget Sound area as business needs dictate. An eye for environment composition. Bonus Points You have skills in at least 1 other area of Technical Art. Ex: Programming, Shaders, Lighting, or Advanced Blueprints You have previous experience developing and growing a team underneath you and/or developing early in career talent. Experience providing feedback to outsourcing teams. Compensation Range: $150,000 - $220,000 Jar of Sparks is a new first party studio with NetEase Games. NetEase Games is one of the largest game developers worldwide by size and revenue. Over the years, NetEase Games has been focusing on developing high quality content and providing the best experience for gamers all around the world. So far, the company has more than 100 games in operation. Its recent games include Naraka: Bladepoint, Knives Out, Onmyoji, Identity V, Harry Potter: Magic Awakened, etc. We are an equal opportunity employer that embraces diversity, equity and inclusion. All employment decisions are made without regard to ideology, race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, genetic information, religion, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, marital status, family status, veteran status, or any other protected status as required as by law

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