Lead Technical Artist – Words with Friends

About the job

Careers Category: Art & Animation

Careers location: Austin, TX, Chicago, IL, Eugene, OR, Toronto, Canada

Connected Worker Type: Connected

Requisition Id: R_110871

Position Overview

Zynga is seeking a knowledgeable and passionate Lead Technical Artist to join our amazing team on Words with Friends! The Lead Technical Artist role involves highly creative problem-solving in various areas of our visual development process. This includes streamlining development pipelines, creating tools, discovering solutions to complex graphical challenges, and bringing inventive ideas to how we could elevate our player experience. The Lead Technical Artist is also a leader that contributes strategic proposals, facilitates communication, and manages our team of high performing technical artists. The Lead Technical Artist will empower, support and guide others to excellence, acting as a role model for organizational, technical, and creative skills, helping to elevate both their team and the wider Zynga technical art community. This position will work closely with the Art Director, Leads, UX Designers, Engineers, Game Designers, Producers and other key players to take Words with Friends into the future!

Main Responsibilities

• Work closely with the Art, UX Designers, Game Designers and Engineering teams to construct and implement game assets in Unity
• Maintain efficient performance for the game’s final visual assets, as well as work to effectively tackle any art-related bugs or hitches that may arise during production
• Develop a foundational understanding of all systems in the game that touch art assets and effectively maintain these systems while rapidly addressing issues before they become problems
• Define, maintain, enhance, and fix pipelines for in-game assets
• Develop and maintain tools for the production pipeline, particularly for animation and technical art tasks
• Create and leverage materials/shaders to aid in hitting established visual targets.
• Create, maintain, and communicate technical art guidelines and implementation techniques.
• Maintain clean, optimized project, periodically auditing assets and sprite atlases, etc
• Profile builds and provide and implement solutions to address performance issues, bugs, and animation/VFX feedback
• Be confident and comfortable providing original ideas and solutions to challenging issues throughout the production environment
• Act as a go-to source of knowledge and provide training to other team members
• Our ideal candidate is an authority in their craft. You are innovative, an excellent communicator, possess a deep knowledge of all things Unity, and have a strong grasp of asset optimization and mobile game performance. You are a contributor of ideas, overseer of pipelines, and collaborator across all parts of the game development process. You thrive when collaborating with others, providing mentorship while drawing from a wide range of skills, to deliver the best achievable results.

Desired Skills And Experience

• Experience at managing teams and individual contributors
• Highly skilled at communication with team members across fields, including the written documentation of pipeline processes
• Driven to stay knowledgeable of industry trends and technologies and share those takeaways with the larger technical artist community
• Deep understanding of technical requirements of mobile game development
• 5+ years of experience and highly proficient with Unity
• Scripting with C#
• Working knowledge of MVVM software architectural pattern
• Proficient with optimizing 3D and 2D assets for memory and performance considerations
• Proficient with Adobe Creative Cloud Suites
• Technical background in developing scripts, Photoshop actions, and other automation tools necessary for art implementation and optimization
• Proficient with profiling tools
• Collaborative and self motivated
• Ability to support the game team with solving problems and technical assistance
• Strong problem-solving methodology
• 5+ years experience in game development
• A passion for games
• Prior experience with version control software such as Perforce and Git
• Animation and VFX proficiency is a major plus

What we offer you:

• Competitive salary, bonus plan and ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan)
• 401K Company Match Contribution (US)
• RRSP/DPSP company match contribution (Canada)
• Health coverage, dental, disability, critical illness, EAP, and life insurance (Canada)
• Medical, dental, vision, EAP, life insurance, and disability benefits (US)
• Virtual mental health and neurodiversity support programs
• Global Fitness reimbursement program
• Global Wellbeing Program
• Financial wellness program with unlimited access to certified financial planners
• Discretionary Time Off policy for many employees
• Family planning support program
• Generous paid parental, pregnancy-related disability, caregiver, and compassionate leaves
• Subsidized Back-up child care
• Zynga happy hours and frequent employee events
• Flexible working hours on many teams
• Culture of diversity and inclusion including employee resource groups
• Work with cool people and impact millions of daily players

We are an equal opportunity employer and we are committed to building a diverse and talented workforce. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, medical condition, disability, or any other class or characteristic protected by applicable law. We welcome job-seekers, players, employees, and partners from all backgrounds to join us!

We will consider all qualified job-seekers with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with physical or mental disabilities in order to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us at AccommodationRequest@zynga.com to request an accommodation associated with your application for an open position.

Zynga does not engage in financial exchanges during the recruitment or onboarding process. We do not conduct job interviews over third-party messaging apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp or others. We will never ask you for your personal or financial information over unofficial chat channels. Our in-house recruitment team only contacts individuals via official company email addresses (i.e., via a zynga.com or naturalmotion.com email domain).

If you believe you have been the victim of a scam, you may wish to contact the authorities. In the United States, you may file a complaint with the FBI. More information is available here: https://www.ic3.gov.