Technical Artist, Virtual/Augmented Reality

Employer

Job Description

Our mission is to protect life.

We’re out to make the world a safer place by solving big problems and taking on the public safety challenges of our time. From our company's inception building the TASER device to a full suite of hardware and software solutions, we are focused on providing police agencies with state-of-the-art devices and services they need to successfully serve and protect us. In the next few years, we're going to eliminate the burden of paperwork in policing, so officers can increase the time they spend building relationships and serving in their communities. We’ll put video at the heart of police records so our justice system can get to the truth faster. And we won't stop innovating until the bullet is rendered obsolete.

It’s a big mission, but it’s one we’ll pursue relentlessly every single day.

Our mission is to protect life

We’re out to make the world a safer place by solving big problems and taking on the public safety challenges of our time. From our company's inception building the TASER to a full suite of hardware and software solutions, we are focused on providing police agencies with state-of-the-art devices and services they need to successfully serve and protect us. In the next few years, we're going to improve the quality, and frequency of police training. We work closely with law enforcement and the community in our training content. We are innovating police training, and we won't stop innovating until the bullet is rendered obsolete.

It’s a big mission, but it’s one we’ll pursue relentlessly every single day.

Your Impact

Build AR And VR Solutions For Social Good

We are working with cutting edge technology and need your help to make it all come together. You will join an interdisciplinary team tackling the biggest challenges in public safety training head-on, including immersive VR based empathy, coping and de-escalation training to help officers engage with the communities they serve, with greater awareness and safety.

As one of the expanding members of the Axon’s AR/VR team, the Technical Artist will be that bridge between art and technical. They will elevate the visuals of our projects through inventive and efficient shaders while helping the rest of the art team deliver the best possible content under our technical restrictions. This role will partner with engineering, content, UX and user research to create the best visual immersive quality products for our trainings.

Our AR/VR Team

We believe that happy teams make the best products, so we foster a friendly, open, introspective team culture that encourages everyone to speak their mind, collaborate together, and have fun. The team conducts daily check-ins, open format meetings, as well as a weekly VR Happy Hour in headset!

We believe we can only succeed if we deeply understand our customers and get to know them. We spend a lot of time with law enforcement officers to learn about their needs, watch their experience and see the real impact of our work. We also work closely with our Axon Community Impact team, along with other community subject experts to create our content and curriculum to reflect the needs of both law enforcement + community.

What about the day-to-day?

On Any Given Day You May Find Yourself

You will focus on supporting artists with shaders, materials, and art asset prototypes so they can realize their work, and be a strategic partner to Art, UX, Product Management and Engineering.

  • Creating production pipelines to improve rapid integration and testing
  • Communicating pipelines and methods to other artist and software engineers
  • Getting into headset to see how the assets are rendering and to give notes to an engineer
  • Optimizing tools and plugins to work effectively in game engines
  • Teach another artist how to implement their work quickly and iteratively
  • Feeling comfortable with shader development using node based graphs as well as coding
  • Answering a question from a Product Manager about a complex skin shader
  • Attending standup in VR and sharing with the XR team (standing around you as avatars) your daily update
  • Modifying and optimize assets based on subject matter expert feedback, animation needs, or technical limitations
  • Work with engineers and technical artist to define and improve our asset pipeline
  • Collaborate with the Art Director and Narrative Designer to prototype custom pipelines to meet project objectives
  • Learning about the latest trends/experiences in XR —experimenting with them yourself

Basic Qualifications

  • 5-7+ years experience of game industry experience as a Technical Artist or equivalent role
  • A portfolio demonstrating knowledge of game pipelines, asset integration, shader development, and agile iteration
  • High proficiency with Photoshop, Maya / Max, Substance Designer/Painter, and ZBrush
  • Experience with physically-based rendering tools, shaders, materials and rendering pipelines
  • Knowledge of character/prop rigging techniques and principles
  • An understanding of art production processes, and experience with the full development cycle in shipped titles
  • Ensure that art assets are performant and fit within their budgets for draw calls, poly counts, texture memory limits, without compromising visual quality
  • Strong problem-solving skills both technical and cross-department
  • Experience with a modern 3D game engine such as Unity and Unreal.
  • Works effectively with cross-functional teams

Experience with physically-based rendering tools, shaders and materials

  • Experienced with graphics diagnostic tools and performance analysis on modern graphics hardware.
  • Solid understanding of lighting fundamentals

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience creating titles on XR platforms like Hololens, Oculus, HTC Vive, or PlayStation VR.
  • Shipped multiple AAA titles or equivalent work
  • Examples of custom editor tools for Unity and/or Unreal
  • A constant desire to learn, improve, and help others improve

Compensation And Benefits

  • Competitive salary and 401K with employer match.
  • Discretionary paid time off.
  • Robust parental leave policy.
  • An award-winning office/working environment.
  • Ride along with real police officers in real life situations, explore wide range of third-party VR content, get inspired.
  • Get paid to play
  • And more...
We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.