Principal Technical Artist

Principal Technical Artist

PeopleFun is seeking a Principal Technical Artist to help stand up a brand new game team and shape the visual and technical foundation of a new casual mobile title. You will be one of the earliest people on the project, working shoulder to shoulder with artists, engineers, and designers to get ideas on screen fast, learn from them, and turn the ones that work into durable pipelines, shaders, tools, and systems.

This is a deeply technical role for someone who thinks in pipelines and profilers but still has the eye of an artist. You will own how art gets authored, integrated, optimized, and rendered, including the game's VFX and its UI implementation in Unity UI Toolkit, and you will set the technical standards the rest of the team builds against as it grows.

Responsibilities include rapidly prototyping visual and technical ideas to help the team evaluate direction, prove out feasibility, and find the fun early. Architect and implement art pipelines, tools, and workflows from scratch, scaling them as the team and project grow. Author shaders and rendering solutions that deliver the intended look while staying within mobile performance and memory budgets. Author production-quality VFX/PFX yourself — particle effects, shader-driven effects, and animated feedback — and build the systems and tooling that let others create them. Establish UI implementation standards in Unity UI Toolkit, including hierarchy structure, layout systems, and responsive behavior across mobile resolutions, aspect ratios, and safe areas. Define technical specifications and asset standards, and build validation tooling that keeps assets compliant as the project scales. Profile and optimize art content — draw calls, overdraw, atlasing, texture and memory budgets, load times, and runtime performance across device tiers. Develop tools and scripts in C#, Python, or similar to automate repetitive art and build tasks, including asset export, import, and marketing asset generation. Debug and resolve visual and performance issues, finding creative solutions within platform constraints. Stay current with developments in mobile graphics, tools, and techniques, proactively bringing best practices into production.

Requirements include 5+ years of professional experience as a Technical Artist in mobile games, with a demonstrated track record of technical depth and artistic judgment. Extensive hands-on Unity experience, including the render pipeline, asset pipeline, prefab and scene architecture, and editor tooling. Strong proficiency in shader development, lighting, and rendering techniques. Demonstrated ability to author VFX/PFX to a shippable quality bar, with a reel or portfolio showing your own effects work. Proven track record of prototyping and rapid iteration, with the judgment to know when to move fast and when to build something that lasts. Demonstrated expertise with Unity UI Toolkit — layout systems, hierarchy design, UXML/USS, and responsive UI implementation for mobile. Deep understanding of optimizing art assets for mobile platforms, including memory management, profiling, and performance debugging. Proven experience building tools and scripts for art pipelines using C#, Python, or similar languages. Solid grounding in 2D art, animation, and UI design principles, with enough craft sensibility to evaluate and elevate the work of the art team. Excellent problem-solving skills, with the ability to work both independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced, cross-functional team.

Preferred qualifications include prior professional experience within casual mobile gaming, including a deep understanding of the visual style and player expectations. Prior experience joining or founding a new game team, and comfort operating without established process or precedent. Prior experience taking a title from pre-production through soft launch, building visual and technical solutions from the ground up. Experience automating or supporting marketing and store asset production through tooling. Applied knowledge of animation systems, procedural asset generation, and VFX pipelines. Familiarity with mobile graphics limitations and strategies for maximizing visual impact within those constraints. Experience setting technical direction across multiple disciplines or mentoring other technical artists. Adaptability to new technologies and tools, with a proactive approach to learning and implementing new techniques.