Technical Artist - Real-Time Rendering & Pipeline Expert

Rippling, Inc.; Auckland; On-site; NZD 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

Blind Squirrel Games in Auckland, NZ seeks a Technical Artist to bridge art and tech across ports and full game development. You’ll shape shaders, tools, and pipelines while mentoring teammates and solving complex rendering challenges.

Collaborate with artists, designers, and engineers to integrate assets in the game engine, optimize performance, and push visual quality within studio standards. This full-time onsite role emphasizes ownership and teamwork.

Qualifications

• A minimum of three years of industry experience in game development specializing in technical art; five or more years is expected for more senior roles.
• At least one shipped title as a Technical Artist; senior roles require two titles.
• Portfolio demonstrating ability to design and implement technical art assets, tools, and solutions.
• Experience integrating and optimizing art assets within a game engine.
• Proficiency in shader development using HLSL and node-based material systems.
• Understanding of art pipelines, asset dependencies, rendering concepts, and performance constraints.
• Ability to troubleshoot technical issues and develop practical solutions with artists and engineers.
• Strong communication, organizational, and time-management skills.
• Greater ownership of complex technical art systems and ability to guide pipelines and mentor others for senior roles.

Responsibilities

• Create and modify shaders using HLSL and develop custom materials through node-based systems.
• Integrate art assets and effects into game engines, troubleshoot integration issues, and optimize performance.
• Develop destructible assets and simulations for elements like cloth and cables.
• Implement HDR workflows, color grading, lighting setups, and post-processing effects.
• Apply real-time rendering techniques, including ray tracing where appropriate, to support lighting and reflections.
• Develop scripts and tools that automate repetitive tasks and improve content creation workflows.
• Use procedural generation techniques to support large-scale art production.
• Support art content development for VR and AR platforms when required.
• Organize and maintain art assets within asset management and version control systems.
• Analyze performance metrics, profile GPU and CPU usage, and help optimize rendering pipelines.
• Collaborate with artists, designers, and engineers to resolve technical challenges.
• Work with production to establish schedules and communicate progress, dependencies, and risks.
• Document technical art pipelines, workflows, tools, and best practices for reference and training.
• Contribute to pipeline improvements, share knowledge, and mentor colleagues as appropriate.
• Perform other duties supporting company objectives.

Skills

HLSL shader development

Node-based materials

Art asset integration

Performance optimization

Tool scripting

Procedural content generation

VR/AR content support

Mentoring colleagues

Tools

Maya

Photoshop

Substance Designer

Substance Painter

ZBrush

Unreal Engine

Unity

Job description

Blind Squirrel Games in Auckland, NZ seeks a Technical Artist to bridge art and tech across ports and full game development. You’ll shape shaders, tools, and pipelines while mentoring teammates and solving complex rendering challenges.

Collaborate with artists, designers, and engineers to integrate assets in the game engine, optimize performance, and push visual quality within studio standards. This full-time onsite role emphasizes ownership and teamwork.