Giant Squid is looking for a talented visual effects artist to help breathe life into our new exciting game project, Sword of the Sea. Your main responsibility will be to implement clear, stylized, and performant visual effects in UE5 using Niagara, materials, and blueprints. Then, use node-based scripting and other means to integrate effects into gameplay and cinematics. We will rely on you to not only create a wide array of effects, but also ensure consistent quality, style, and optimization across our project’s effects library.

Visual effects are a key element of satisfying and juicy gameplay, and a central way to visually communicate game state to the player. We often take unconventional approaches to creating effects that achieve those things. We are looking for someone who shares our excitement for learning and researching new VFX techniques to implement the most compelling yet efficient effects. Our ideal candidate will have wide ranging technical knowledge of 3D effects and how they are made, including particles, materials, textures, render targets, and 3D modeling and animation processes for effects. You will regularly be utilizing graphics tricks such as scrolling UVs, vertex color hacks, texture channel packing, fluid sims, material based vertex animation, and more. Additionally, algebra and trigonometry for effects will be an everyday aspect of this role’s responsibilities.

Giant Squid is a small but seasoned team of award-winning game developers, known for making ABZÛ and The Pathless. The innovative and beautiful game experiences that we make spring from a team culture that is friendly, open, and inclusive. We are looking for a team player who fits right into close-knit small team development and is willing to step outside of regular workflows to make things happen.

This is a contract remote position, and we are a fully remote team. We operate mainly in the PST time zone and prefer that your location is in a time zone relatively close to ours – ideally within 3 hours from Pacific Time.

Responsibilities
- Design and implement real-time 3D visual effects in UE5
- Create particle systems, materials, textures, and blueprints for effects
- Collaborate with designers and programmers to integrate effects into gameplay and cinematics
- Ensure effects are consistent in quality and style, and optimized, across the project

Qualifications
- Experience with UE5 visual effects creation
- Experience with 3D modeling software
- Experience creating textures for VFX in Photoshop, Substance Designer, or similar
- At least one title shipped as a VFX artist, technical artist, or equivalent experience
- Good understanding of algebra and trigonometry for effects

Bonus
- Experience with 2D fluid simulation
- Experience with python scripting