Senior VFX Engineer – Remote Real-Time Unity Effects

Lever, Inc.; Portugal; Remote; EUR 70,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meaningful ownership

Cross-team collaboration

Rendering challenges

Creative engineering

International team

Fully remote

Flexible contracts

Annual retreats

Long-term collaboration

Job summary

Lever, Inc. is seeking a Senior VFX Engineer based in Portugal to own real-time VFX technology for a major Unity3D game project.

You will develop shaders, GPU-driven effects, tooling, and scalable runtime systems, balancing visual ambition with performance and maintainability. You will collaborate with VFX Artists, Technical Artists, Gameplay Engineers, and Rendering Engineers to prototype, implement production-ready solutions, and build editor tooling.

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 technologies.
• Strong knowledge of real-time rendering concepts, including blending, transparency, sorting, depth, instancing, and Scriptable or custom 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 shaders

Real-time rendering

C# programming

ECS/DOTS

Mobile optimization

Shader Graph

Shuriken particles

Unity tooling

Graphics APIs

English proficiency

Tools

Unity Shader Graph

Amplify

Shuriken

Unity Editor

Job description

Lever, Inc. is seeking a Senior VFX Engineer based in Portugal to own real-time VFX technology for a major Unity3D game project.

You will develop shaders, GPU-driven effects, tooling, and scalable runtime systems, balancing visual ambition with performance and maintainability. You will collaborate with VFX Artists, Technical Artists, Gameplay Engineers, and Rendering Engineers to prototype, implement production-ready solutions, and build editor tooling.