What are the responsibilities and job description for the Lead Game Technical Artist I position at Ainsworth Game Technology?
POSITION SUMMARY
The Game Lead Technical Artist I is a technical leader who owns major pipeline domains and ensures the studio’s Unity content workflows are scalable, maintainable, and efficient. This role drives standards adoption, leads large optimization and tooling efforts, and mentors technical artists and content creators. The Game Lead Technical Artist I partners closely with Engineering and Art leadership to align runtime constraints with product goals and schedules.
MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES
This position will be responsible for the following primary functions:
- Produce high-quality animations using animation principles for characters, environments, UI, and VFX
- Encourage and generate creative ideas and solutions with the team
- Demonstrate excellent time management to deliver art and animations to the required quality, specification, and time
- Design and maintain production-ready Unity pipelines (asset import/validation, shader systems, animation pipeline, build/content packaging, performance tooling)
- Architect maintainable tool ecosystems (shared libraries, modular editor tooling, automated checks in CI/build pipelines where applicable)
- Establish budgets/standards (texture memory, mesh density, rig complexity, shader complexity) and enforce through automation
- Lead performance and memory initiatives across scenes/features; track, report, and improve key metrics
- Partner with Engineers to integrate tooling into project workflows and version control (Perforce, GIT)
- Superior level 3D artist, with ability to design optimized texture sheets for 3D assets implemented in Unity
- Drive cross-project consistency: templates, starter content, documentation, training sessions, and review practices
- Act as escalation point for complex production blockers; lead root-cause analysis and durable fixes
- Mentor and develop Level I–III technical artists; contribute to hiring and interviewing
Education & Experience
- 4 years of experience using Unity
- 4 years of game development experience with significant technical art/tools ownership
- Degree in Art, Animation, Computer Science/Engineering, or equivalent experience
Knowledge & Skills
- Ability to provide and receive feedback
- Unity experience (mandatory); familiarity with prefab workflows and asset import pipeline
- Expert Unity pipeline and tooling experience (C#), including scalable architecture and maintainability
- Strong real-time rendering/material knowledge and performance tradeoff decision-making
- Strong cross-discipline communication and leadership without direct authority
- Portfolio/case studies showing measurable pipeline efficiency or performance gains
Other Requirements
Successful candidate must be able to obtain and maintain a Nevada Gaming registration if applicable.
Occasionally, additional hours may be required based on business needs and demands.