Senior Real-Time VFX Engineer – Unity

Lever, Inc.; Schweiz; Remote; CHF 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully remote work

Annual team retreats

Competitive compensation

Job summary

Lever, Inc. is seeking a Senior VFX Engineer in Switzerland to own real-time visual effects tech for a Unity3D game project. You will design scalable runtime systems, shaders, and GPU-driven effects, collaborating with artists and engineers to balance visual quality with performance.

You'll prototype new rendering approaches, build artist tools, and drive production-ready solutions across mobile and desktop targets, while maintaining clean, reusable tech for the wider team.

Qualifications

• Strong professional experience with HLSL shader programming and real-time VFX development.
• Fluency with node-based shader tools such as Unity Shader Graph, Amplify, or similar.
• Strong knowledge of real-time rendering concepts including blending, transparency, sorting, depth, instancing, and render pipelines.
• Proven experience shipping particle-based effects in Unity, including Shuriken or equivalent systems.
• Hands-on experience with mesh particles, trails, flipbooks, shader-driven effects, and procedural VFX techniques.
• Experience designing scalable runtime systems for high-frequency effects, including pooling, batching, prioritization, and performance budgeting.
• Strong C# programming skills, ideally within gameplay, engine, or performance-critical systems.
• Experience with ECS/DOTS, Jobs, Burst, or equivalent performance-oriented architectures is strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of mobile GPU optimization, including overdraw, half precision, texture and memory budgets, shader variants, and runtime constraints.
• Experience creating Unity Editor tooling such as custom inspectors, property drawers, asset processors, and batch tools.
• Understanding of Metal, Vulkan, and GLES, including platform-specific graphics limitations and shader or PSO warmup considerations.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across artistic and engineering disciplines.
• Fluent English.

Responsibilities

• Develop scalable runtime systems for high-frequency gameplay effects, including pooling, shared emitters, batching, prioritization, and effect budgets.
• Design and implement shaders using HLSL, Shader Graph, Amplify, or comparable technologies.
• Build and optimize particle-based effects using mesh particles, trails, flipbooks, procedural techniques, and GPU-driven approaches.
• Create artist-facing Unity tools, including custom inspectors, validators, asset processors, batch workflows, and reusable production utilities.
• Optimize VFX for mobile and other performance-constrained platforms, with a focus on GPU performance, memory usage, overdraw, shader complexity, and runtime efficiency.
• Collaborate closely with VFX Artists, Technical Artists, Gameplay Engineers, and Rendering Engineers to translate creative requirements into robust technical solutions.
• Prototype new rendering and VFX approaches, validate their technical feasibility, and bring successful solutions through to production.
• Establish reusable templates, workflows, documentation, and technical standards that improve the efficiency and consistency of the wider VFX team.
• Act as a bridge between artistic and engineering disciplines, making informed technical decisions that balance visual quality, scalability, and performance.
• Review and improve existing systems while leaving behind clean, maintainable technology that benefits the broader team.

Skills

HLSL shader programming

Real-time VFX development

C# programming

Unity shader concepts

GPU-driven effects

Shader graph / node-based tools

Multidisciplinary collaboration

Performance optimization

Tools

Unity Shader Graph

Amplify

Shuriken

Job description

Lever, Inc. is seeking a Senior VFX Engineer in Switzerland to own real-time visual effects tech for a Unity3D game project. You will design scalable runtime systems, shaders, and GPU-driven effects, collaborating with artists and engineers to balance visual quality with performance.

You'll prototype new rendering approaches, build artist tools, and drive production-ready solutions across mobile and desktop targets, while maintaining clean, reusable tech for the wider team.