About the role
Company Overview
Gameloft creates moments of joy for players around the world through exciting gaming experiences. With over 25 years of history, the company has created titles such as Asphalt, Dungeon Hunter, Modern Combat, and over 200 other games. Gameloft is expanding into cross-platform games on PC and consoles, including Disney Speedstorm and Disney Dreamlight Valley. The company employs nearly 3,000 people globally and prides itself on fostering a diverse and inclusive environment.
Position Summary
Gameloft Montreal is seeking a Technical Artist for the Disney Dreamlight Valley team, a cross-platform hybrid life-sim/adventure game. The role involves designing tools and developing an optimal graphics production pipeline to support the team's creation process while meeting artistic and performance expectations.
Main Tasks and Responsibilities
Pipeline & Tooling
- Monitor and maintain the art asset pipeline, and catch issues before they reach a build.
- Write and maintain DCC tools that enforce naming conventions, triangle budgets, UV layouts, etc.
- Author and maintain engine-side import settings (models, texture compression, etc.).
Performance & Optimization
- Establish per-asset budgets (triangle count, texel density, material count, etc.) per scene or asset class, and audit new asset submissions against them before violations compound across the project.
- Profile builds on target hardware and translate the findings into actionable steps.
- Optimize specific assets when needed.
Shaders & Materials
- Work closely with the Graphics Programmers to author and maintain the project shader library using both Shader Graph and HLSL.
- Collaborate with the Art Director to prototype new visual effects and work with the art team to integrate them in the project.
- Investigate and fix material/shader bugs (depth and sorting artifacts, tiling artifacts, incorrect PBR response, etc.).
- Validate material setups across lighting conditions and target platforms.
Art Team Standards
- Write and maintain the Art Bible's technical sections (naming conventions, export specs, texture formats, folder structure, optimization considerations, etc.), which are critical for internal artists and outsourcing partners.
- Onboard new artists to pipeline tools and enforce standards.
- Own first-response triage for all art-to-engine issues.
- Scope and spec new art pipeline requests and features.
- Evaluate and recommend new tools, plugins, and pipeline upgrades.
Qualifications
- Experience contributing to an art pipeline on a shipped project.
- Experience shipping on at least one console platform (Nintendo Switch, PS5, or Xbox Series) and hands-on experience with platform-specific memory and shader constraints.
- Proficient with Git and SVN, and comfortable with merge-request-based workflows.
Engine & Pipeline
- Strong Unity proficiency (URP), with hands-on experience in several of its systems (rendering, asset pipeline, profiling, debugging).
- Proficient in C# for editor tooling (custom inspectors, validators, batch processors).
- Experience writing or maintaining asset validation tools.
- Comfortable working with import presets and platform overrides (texture compression, mesh compression).
DCC Tools
- Experience writing scripts in at least one of the following: 3ds Max, Blender, or Maya (exporters, batch tools, validation, scene cleanup).
- Familiarity with Substance 3D Painter/Designer workflows.
Shaders & Materials
- Solid HLSL experience in URP, including custom lit/unlit shaders and shader keywords.
- Comfortable in Shader Graph and understands when handwritten HLSL is a better option.
- Good understanding of PBR, color spaces, and how lighting behaves across platforms.
- Experience debugging shader issues across platforms.
Performance & Profiling
- Hands-on experience with GPU profiling and debugging tools such as Unity Frame Debugger and Nsight, and able to read a frame capture to identify common GPU bottlenecks (draw calls, fillrate, shader costs).
- Experience working with per-asset and per-scene budgets (triangles, texel density, material count, overdraw, memory) and helping enforce them.
Standards & Communication
- Experience writing and maintaining technical art documentation (Art Bible sections, pipeline guides).
- Comfortable guiding artists on technical best practices and reviewing their work for pipeline compliance.
- Comfortable as the first point of contact for artists who have encountered engine issues.
- Able to scope a pipeline feature request, write a short spec, estimate, and ship it.
Nice to Have
- Experience supporting rigging and animation pipelines (troubleshooting issues and content review).
- Experience supporting VFX (troubleshooting, optimization and content review).
- Familiarity with Houdini (procedural pipelines, HDAs) or other procedural content tools.
- Compute shader experience (grass/particle systems, GPU instancing, indirect draw, etc.).
- Experience with lighting pipelines (light probes, baking workflows, probe authoring tools).
- Familiarity with Jira/Confluence for issue triage and pipeline documentation.
- Previous experience as an artist before moving into tech art.
Additional Information
- Type: Full-time.
- Management Role: No.
- Work Model: Hybrid.
- Platform: PC/Console.
- Culture: Gameloft believes in using video games as a force for positive change, supporting the environment, and building an inclusive world. The company emphasizes creating fun, high-quality games for global players.