Principal VFX Artist at King

King’s New Games Studio is seeking a highly accomplished, deeply creative, and hands‑on Principal VFX Artist to join our world‑class development team. This is a senior, high‑impact leadership role tailored for a visionary artist who can seamlessly guide visual effects from initial abstract ideation to final, high‑polish, in‑game implementation.

In this position (
Principal VFX Artist
), you will be instrumental in defining, designing, building, and safeguarding the comprehensive VFX vocabulary for an unannounced, next‑generation mobile title.

The ideal candidate bridges elite artistic judgment with profound, production‑proven technical expertise in Unity. You are an expert at generating innovative ideas, exploring distinct visual styles, and building real‑time assets directly in‑engine to elevate player experiences. As a Principal Artist, you are inherently self‑driven, meticulously organized, and fully comfortable taking complete ownership of complex visual pillars without needing granular, day‑to‑day supervision.

You possess an intrinsic understanding of product goals, a keen eye for optimizing workflow bottlenecks, and a dedication to pushing visual frontiers while remaining disciplined regarding performance budgets, mobile hardware constraints, and overall production realities.

Role Component
Details

Job Title Principal VFX Artist

Studio Unit New Games Studio (Unannounced Title)

Company King (A subsidiary of Microsoft)

Locations Stockholm (Norrmalm), London (Soho), Barcelona (Passeig de Gràcia)

Employment Status Full‑time

Core Discipline Real‑time VFX Design, Technical Art Collaboration, Visual Language Definition

Primary Workflows Unity Particle System, Shader Graph, VFX Graph, URP, Custom Materials

Target Platforms Mobile / Casual / High‑Polished Free‑to‑Play

Key Directives Leadership by example, mobile optimization, cross‑discipline feature ownership

As a Principal VFX Artist, your core mandate is to serve as both the creative engine and technical anchor for real‑time visual effects. Your responsibilities include:

• End‑to‑End Asset Creation: Author high‑fidelity visual effects from initial concept, mood boards, and aesthetic exploration through to complex runtime implementation within Unity.
• Holistic System Design: Conceptualize and deploy striking gameplay, UI, environmental, ambient, and highly celebratory reward effects that reinforce the game’s core art direction.
• Creative Authorship: Introduce original visual mechanics and timing concepts to actively shape how the game feels, moves, and reacts responsively to user inputs.
• Technical Engine Mastery: Work hands‑on with cutting‑edge Unity VFX pipelines, utilizing Particle Systems, Shader Graph, VFX Graph, the Universal Render Pipeline (URP), custom materials, and animation‑driven logic.
• Aesthetic Translation: Successfully translate static 2D/3D concepts, loose production sketches, prototypes, and rough placeholder designs into dynamic, elegant in‑engine assets.
• Cross‑Functional Ownership: Manage VFX pipelines for entire game features, forming tight, collaborative loops with Game Designers, Concept Artists, Technical Artists, and Engineers.
• Mobile Performance Optimization: Profile and optimize complex systems for mobile platforms, expertly balancing artistic ambition against hardware, memory, draw‑call limits, overdraw, and frame‑rate boundaries.
• Infrastructure Definition: Identify visual, architectural, and workflow bottlenecks in production, while designing practical solutions and setting clear standards for naming conventions, folder structures, and implementation guidelines.
• R&D Partnership: Brainstorm alongside Technical Art and Engineering pipelines to develop custom shaders, internal profiling tools, and specialized runtime rendering techniques.

King is looking for an exceptional artist who exhibits exquisite taste, elite craftsmanship, and a profound understanding of how real‑time VFX dictate player psychology, gameplay clarity, and emotional reward. You are far more than a technical implementer; you are an innovative designer who looks at a feature, diagnoses its functional intent, and…