Technical Artist - VFX

Our team is building a real-time VFX particle system designed from the ground up for AI-native authoring. Rather than bolting AI onto tools built for manual node-graph workflows, it's purpose-built so effects can be authored, evaluated, and iterated by AI agents working directly in the running engine, with human Technical Artists defining the craft, the quality bar, and the creative direction the system aims for.

We're looking for a VFX Technical Artist who is excellent at the fundamentals of real-time VFX today and energized by where the discipline is heading. You'll do hands-on VFX work, and you'll shape a system that scales your taste and technical judgment across thousands of effects. This is a rare 0→1 role on a small, high-leverage team, at the inflection point of Horizon's mobile platform.

What you'll do:
• Author and prototype high-quality, performant real-time VFX that set the visual bar for Horizon, and that become the reference the AI pipeline learns from.
• Define and own the VFX quality bar: turn "what good looks like" into reference effects, presets, style guidance, and evaluation criteria that both people and agents can work against.
• Build and curate the standard library of behaviors (forces, color, spawning, motion) and the library of golden reference effects the agentic pipeline composes from.
• Art-direct AI-generated VFX: review, critique, and steer agent output toward shippable quality, then feed what you learn back into presets, schema, and evaluations.
• Partner with engineers to shape the authoring schema (an S-expression / Lisp-based DSL) so it expresses real creative intent, not just raw parameters.
• Help design visual evaluation and critique systems (e.g., vision-model-in-the-loop) that scale aesthetic judgment as the agent layer comes online.
• Own real-time VFX performance on mobile and VR, establishing budgets, profiling, and optimizing against tight frame-time and memory targets (GPU compute, data-oriented pipelines, 90Hz+).
• Collaborate across art, design, and engineering in a fast-moving, ambiguity-rich environment, using AI-assisted (agentic) tooling to move quickly.

We are a company committed to creating diverse and inclusive environments where people can bring their full, authentic selves to work every day. We are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer that believes everyone matters. Qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment regardless of their race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, marital status, national origin, ancestry, genetic factors, age, disability, protected veteran status, military or uniformed service member status, or any other status or characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or recruiting process, please send a request to HR@insightglobal.com.To learn more about how we collect, keep, and process your private information, please review Insight Global's Workforce Privacy Policy: https://insightglobal.com/workforce-privacy-policy/.

• Proven track record authoring real-time VFX for shipped games or interactive experiences (Unity, Unreal, or a proprietary engine).
• Strong real-time VFX craft across particles, shaders, and materials/textures (e.g., Unity VFX Graph, Unreal Niagara, PopcornFX, Houdini; Embergen or Bifrost a plus).
• Experience profiling and optimizing VFX for performance, especially on constrained hardware.
• Technical fluency: shader languages (HLSL/GLSL) and at least one scripting language (e.g., Python).
• Experience collaborating and communicating across multi-disciplinary teams, including engineers and designers.
• Experience with version control systems (Git, Perforce, etc.).
• Demonstrated adaptability (a track record of picking up new tools, workflows, or paradigms and thriving as they change).

• Genuine curiosity about (and hands-on experimentation with) AI/LLM tooling for content creation.
• Experience building VFX tools, pipelines, or shared preset/stdlib libraries that other creators build on.
• Comfort with procedural, data-oriented content generation (e.g., Houdini HDAs).
• Comfort reading or reasoning about code-as-data / DSLs / functional or shader-graph-style authoring (Lisp / S-expressions a plus, but not required).
• Experience defining quality bars, style guides, or evaluation rubrics for visual content.
• Real-time experience on mobile and/or VR/AR.
• Self-directed, product-minded, and comfortable operating in small (sub-5-person), 0→1 teams.

Why this role is different:
Most VFX roles are measured by how many great effects you can make. This one is measured by that, and by how well you teach a system to make them with you. As the system matures, your reference effects, your standard library, and your definition of "good" become leverage that compounds across everything we ship. If you want to keep your hands on the craft while shaping the next generation of how VFX gets made, this is that seat.

Benefit packages for this role will start on the 1st day of employment and include medical, dental, and vision insurance, as well as HSA, FSA, and DCFSA account options, and 401k retirement account access with employer matching. Employees in this role are also entitled to paid sick leave and/or other paid time off as provided by applicable law.