2K Games - Technical Art Graduate Program - Dublin

2K Games, Inc.; Dublin; Hybrid; EUR 30,000 - 40,000; Full time

Job summary

2K Games in Dublin invites recent graduates to join a 21‑month Technical Art Graduate Program. You will develop tools, pipelines, rigs and shaders, rotating across studios including Hangar 13, Visual Concepts, Firaxis and others.

Foundation training uses Unreal Engine, Maya, Python and Perforce, with mentorship and real project reviews. Two main qualifications are a strong portfolio and some scripting ability; comfort with at least one content-creation tool is expected, and a recent degree is

Qualifications

• Outstanding portfolio showing work; it may be art, scripts, rigs, or shaders.
• Recent Graduate eligible; degree in related field and up-to-date portfolio.
• Ability to read code and show some scripting experience.

Responsibilities

• Build tools, rigs, shaders, and pipelines for art teams.
• Collaborate with multiple studios across rotations.
• Demonstrate work and communicate clearly with teams.

Skills

Curiosity

Persistence

Communication

Maya

Unreal Engine

Python

Perforce

Education

Game Art, Animation, VFX, Technical Art, Computer Science, Engineering or related field

Tools

Unreal Engine

Maya

Python

Perforce

Job description

2K Games - Technical Art Graduate Program - Dublin

Dublin, Ireland

Founded in 2005, 2K Games is a global video game company, publishing titles developed by some of the most influential game development studios in the world. Our studios responsible for developing 2K’s portfolio of world-class games across multiple platforms, include Visual Concepts, Firaxis, Hangar 13, CatDaddy, Cloud Chamber, and HB Studios. Our portfolio of titles is expanding due to our global strategic plan, building, and acquiring exciting studios whose content continues to inspire all of us! 2K publishes titles in today’s most popular gaming genres, including sports, shooters, action, role-playing, strategy, casual, and family entertainment.

Our team of engineers, marketers, artists, writers, data scientists, producers, problem solvers, and doers, are the professional publishing stewards of our growing library of critically acclaimed franchises such as NBA 2K, Battleborn, BioShock, Borderlands, PGA TOUR 2K, Mafia, Sid Meier’s Civilization, WWE 2K, and XCOM.

At 2K, we pride ourselves on creating an inclusive work environment, which means encouraging our teams to Come as You Are and do your best work! We are dedicated to diversity and inclusion and want our community of candidates to reflect this commitment. We encourage all qualified applicants to explore our global positions.

What is Technical Art?

Technical Artists make the art team more capable than it would be on its own. The art team is your customer, its problems set your priorities, and your work is judged on whether the artists it was built for actually use it.

In practice that means building the tools artists use to create content, the rigs that make characters move, the shaders that give a world its look, the rules that scatter a landscape with vegetation, and the pipelines that carry all of it into the game.

Program overview

21 months, starting Summer 2027, based in Dublin.

You get a brief, a deadline, and the tools art teams use every day, and you work out how to deliver. You build across all four specializations, including the ones you are weakest in: Pipeline and Tools, Character and Animation, Rendering and Visuals, Environment and World. What you build is reviewed by people who do this for a living, and the review covers how you worked and how you talked to the people you built it for, not only what you delivered. Some of the work is yours alone and some is shared with the Engineering and Publishing graduates.

Foundation Training runs on Unreal Engine, Maya, Python, and Perforce. The program assumes you arrive knowing one or two of them, not all four.

Three strategic rotations, six months each.

Rotations run across our studios, including Hangar 13, HB Studios, Visual Concepts, Firaxis, Small Axe, and Gearbox, and across the central technology teams that build the tools and pipelines every studio shares. Which team you rotate onto is decided around game timelines, and what the teams need at the time, and your own developing focus is part of that conversation.

What we are looking for

An outstanding portfolio is the first thing we look at, and it should show the work and how you got there. It does not have to be an art portfolio. Tools, scripts, rigs, shaders all count. If the work was made with other people, tell us which parts were yours.

There are two things you need:

• Comfort in at least one content-creation package or game engine. Maya, Blender, Houdini, Substance, Unreal Engine, or whatever you happened to learn.
• Some scripting. It does not need to be much, but you should be able to read code and have written something.

Beyond that, the qualities that matter most:

• Curiosity. You want to know how things are made, and you dig in to find out.
• Persistence. A lot of this job is being stuck: something is broken, the reason is not obvious, and you keep going until you find it.
• Communication. You will spend more time talking and asking questions than most people expect.

Education. Game Art, Animation, VFX, Technical Art, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. We also take people with any unrelated degree who have a portfolio that shows the work. What you have made matters more to us than where you studied. The key is that you have a recent degree.

Experience. No games industry experience is needed. This is a graduate program, and it is built for people who have never worked in games. Mod work, game jams, university projects, and freelance work are all relevant experiences as far as we are concerned.

Recent graduates. Eligible Grads from January 2025 to June 2027 are eligible to apply. Exceptions may be made on a case-by-case basis if your grad date falls outside of these dates.

Technical Art is a job people arrive at from many directions, so apply even if you do not match every line above.

Demographic Questionnaire - UK and Ireland

As part of 2K’s commitment to maintaining a workplace culture of inclusion and respect, we aim to find opportunities to improve our diversity and inclusion practices and resources. We hope that you will help us achieve this goal by voluntarily disclosing your demographic information.

Whether you choose to disclose this information is entirely your decision. You will not be treated any differently based on your choice.

Any information you provide will be confidential, kept securely, and will not be used to make any employment-related decisions. More information about how 2K handles your personal data is available at 2K Applicant Privacy Notice.

Finally, as a reminder, 2K is an equal employment opportunity employer. 2K does not discriminate, harass, or retaliate against individuals based on any protected characteristic. If you have any questions about this policy, please connect with [e-mail] for support.