Senior Technical Artist

Senior Technical Artist - Las Vegas, NV

Konami Gaming is looking for a Senior Technical Artist to join our team! This onsite position is responsible for blending artistic expertise and technical ability, creating visually stimulating content that will enhance gameplay and showcase original experiences to a wide player audience. The Senior Technical Artist fits in between the technical team and the art team, enabling the highest quality artwork to be implemented in games, while ensuring all technical requirements including overall game size and performance are met.

Working collaboratively with game teams, the Senior Technical Artist strives to provide improvements for tools, workflows and processes within a Unity-based development environment. This role will guide artists not experienced in Unity in developing art optimally for the platform and will support other Technical Artists in building their Unity knowledge and experience.

• Integrate assets into games without sacrificing artistic vision or exceeding technical limits of the platform.
• Collaborate with artists and engineers to implement assets effectively, facilitate communication, and build working relationships.
• Develop and maintain art production workflow/pipeline by writing scripts/tools to aid artists in creating visually stunning work more effectively.
• Prepare data for game integration with fidelity to the artistic vision and within the platform’s technical limits.
• Align each game’s asset creation with the functional specification/graphic proposal.
• Create graphic data focusing on visual reinforcement of game rules and game flow.
• Apply cost-effective, effort-maximizing techniques and tools.
• Produce particles, shaders and other VFX for Unity applications.
• Efficiently solve problems, communicate, and educate other team members as needed.
• Proactively self-train to remain at the forefront of Unity engine technology.
• Help build rapid prototypes of experimental features using Unity 3D.
• Iterate on Unity 3D scene implementation to finalize product and other creative requirements.
• Analyze Konami and competitor products and field performance from a player’s perspective to find industry trends, consider players in art design, and discern which art approaches are most effective to appeal to gamblers.
• • Attending field research trips to casinos monthly or as required. Researching via online methods (e.g., You Tube) to build familiarity with the industry.
  • Attending and providing input on follow-up team analysis discussions.
  • Attending G2E and other trade shows or conferences as required.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

• Bachelor’s degree in Graphics, Game Development, or related field; or equivalent experience.
• Master’s degree and art-related certifications or awards desirable.
• 8+ years of related experience and/or training.
• 4+ years of experience working with cross-functional development teams creating multimedia-rich games, ideally slots.
• 2+ years of experience in game production as a game artist or engineer.
• 2+ years of experience developing and maintaining tools and writing scripts within the Unity development environment.
• Ability to communicate professionally and efficiently, both verbal and written with all levels of the business.
• Must be able to obtain and maintain Gaming licensure(s).
• Accountable for developing and maintaining art production workflow/pipeline by writing scripts/tools to aid artists to create more efficiently.
• Profiling and performance optimization of applications will be required.
• Strong ability to problem-solve and help guide development of slot titles from concept to launch.
• Understanding of interactive game art standards (UI/UX design and appeal).
• 2+ years of experience with C# and use of the Unity Engine professionally.
• Experience with C++, C#, and Unity-based slot development.
• Demonstrated experience in producing particles, shaders and other visual effects for Unity applications.
• Comprehensive knowledge of rendering fundamentals: modeling, texturing/shading/surfacing, rigging, animation, lighting, rendering.
• Significant experience using the MS Office suite including Excel is required.

• Minima…