Technical Artist (Contract Position)

Blackbird Interactive is a creative-fueled, future-driven, independent game studio where the best talent in the industry can find long-term careers to help grow their abilities while working on a wide range of projects, which encompass world-class IPs as well as our own creations across multiple genres.

In 2022, we announced that our studio is implementing a four-day work week as well as supporting in-studio, remote within Canada, and hybrid work arrangements as permanent options to our employees.

Blackbird Interactive is looking for a passionate and experienced Technical Artist to join our team and be a key part of our art and engineering backbone. Do you want to build stylish and compelling interactive experiences? Do you love collaborating with designers, artists, and programmers to create ambitious in-game content that is both beautiful and performant?

You will be part of a small, high-performing team that can rapidly explore ideas and deliver elegant solutions to complex technical and creative challenges. As a Technical Artist, you will work closely with art and engineering to support content creation, improve workflows, and help push the visual quality of our games while respecting technical constraints.

Responsibilities:
• Act as a bridge between Art, Engineering, and the game engine, helping teams communicate effectively and solve cross-disciplinary problems.
• Support artists with art-to-engine integration, including setup, debugging, and optimization of assets and systems.
• Design, build, and maintain tools, scripts, and workflows that improve artist productivity and content quality.
• Collaborate with artists on animation, modeling, texturing, shaders, FX, and other real-time content disciplines.
• Help identify visual or performance issues and devise high-quality solutions within technical constraints.
• Contribute to the development and maintenance of art pipelines and production processes.
• Generate clear, concise documentation for tools, workflows, and pipelines.
• Take ownership of technical challenges, work with minimal supervision, and proactively propose improvements

Requirements:
• Strong understanding of real-time content development and game art pipelines.
• Technical proficiency across one or more art disciplines (eg. animation, modeling, texturing, FX) with a solid grasp of how they interact in-engine.
• Experience supporting or developing production tools and workflows.
• Some programming or scripting experience (eg. C++, C#, Python, or similar)Understanding of asset management and version control practices.
• Familiarity with animation rigs and game animation systems.
• Experience working with DCC tools such as Maya.
• Strong problem-solving skills, curiosity, and a collaborative mindset

Pluses:
• Understanding of shader development and material systems.
• Experience with particle systems and real-time visual effects.
• Experience working in off-the-shelf engines such as Unity or Unreal.
• Knowledge of performance profiling and optimization for real-time content.
• Experience with Perforce (P4V)