A leader in creating deep and engaging experiences on PC and mobile, Jagex was founded in 2001 and is today one of the UK’s biggest and most respected video game developers and publishers.
Famed for its flagship MMOs RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, Jagex has welcomed more than 260million player accounts to its world and created a $1bn lifetime franchise revenue. Today the RuneScape franchise exists beyond running games in live operations; our titles are living games that connect and inspire millions of players, with content and experiences both inside and outside of inexhaustible game worlds.
Both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, on PC and mobile, offer ever-evolving, highly-active worlds and our community-focussed development ethos empowers players to have a real say in how each game is shaped.
Jagex is expanding and extending its portfolio with fresh franchise titles, new IP and, in 2018 launched Jagex Partners, delivering third-party publishing and operational services exclusively for the living games of the future.
Jagex employs more than 400 people at its Cambridge headquarters and is on the hunt for talented people to work across the business to help the company to achieve yet another year of record growth and player satisfaction.
Job Purpose:
A Lead Technical Artist is responsible for ensuring both the artistic and creative vision of a project are not compromised by the technical limitations of software, engine, processes or pipelines. They use their skills to push the boundaries of possibility in game engines to reach and go beyond visual targets. The lead works directly both with art and engineering to develop software tools and scripts, building pipelines and workflows that increase efficiencies and unlock creativity. They are responsible for the evaluation, development, communication, documentation and policing of asset creation at a technical level, ensuring robust delivery pipelines for both internal and external teams.
Leads split time effectively between leading and individual task contribution. They are expected to liaise with production and programming to ensure solid work streams in their discipline. A lead will provide technical leadership within discipline in line with game requirements and art direction criteria. They are the gate keeper of quality within their discipline and are responsible for their teams’ career growth.
Main Duties and Responsibilities:
- Build, lead, mentor and where applicable manage a team of technical artists
- Drives quality standards and ensure all content is meeting technical specifications while hitting the art direction criteria
- Strategically plans and delivers professional quality tools and scripts for art packages (Python, MEL, Z-script …) or tools that extend to the game engine (Unreal in C# …).
- Authors and maintains scripts, tools or documentation for external asset production.
- Ensures all tools have streamlined UX with re-usable modular components, highly adaptable controls together with clear documentation.
- Responsible for building, documenting and policing a robust framework on which to build the games foundation (folder structures, naming conventions, etc)
- Support the teams rapid prototyping and problem solving from a technical perspective
- Leads the definition of specifications and strategic planning for a games graphical technology, tooling and performance
- Teams ‘go to’ technical expertise point of contact between code and art, feeding back to the game engineers on system needs and improvements
- Leads others on best practice including defining and documenting game or engine technical specifications and driving workflow optimizations.
- Effectively debugs and corrects very complex, interconnected problems with cross discipline dependencies.
- Investigate and champion new techniques that push visual innovation whilst adhering to art direction and game engine parameters.
What we are looking for:
- Hands on experience in Unreal having shipped several titles as a senior or lead level technical artist
- Teaching and mentoring proficiency in scripting languages such as Mel, PyMel, PyQT, Python, C# and LUA.
- Strong experience with high level shader languages such as glsl, hlsl and cgfx with the ability to optimize surfacing.
- Expert understanding and significant experience of various platform requirements (PC, console, AAA mobile)
- Expertise in modern content creation applications (Maya, Substance, Z-brush, Houdini, Photoshop, etc)
- Deep experience of end to end modern development pipelines in 3D asset creation, VFX and animation
- Ability to script and plan code for efficient re-use and extensibility adhering to coding standards.
- Proven experience of optimization techniques and robust memory budget management
- Portfolio showcasing artistic background that supports strong visual decision making
- Portfolio showcasing rigs, tools, scripts together with documentation
- Formal training or strong self-education in coding and scripting.
- Highly organized with structured, methodical thinking
Company Benefits:
- Flexible Working
- Bonus Scheme
- Private Health Care
- Gym Membership
- Generous Pension Contributions
- Life Insurance
- Free Cycle Repair
- Income Protection
- Dental Plan
- Free Fruit and Drinks
- Subsidised Canteen
Feel like you fit this role, but don’t meet all the requirements? We strive for fresh perspectives, so as long as you can demonstrate how your attitude and other abilities might make up for any gaps we would welcome your application!
Jagex are an equal opportunities employer and positively encourages applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, religion or belief.
