Graphics Engineer

As a Graphics Engineer at Unknown Worlds your primary responsibility will be to help our teams deliver high quality visuals and exceptional graphics performance across multiple platforms.  

We have a distributed team, self direction and excellent communication are important skills for success in this environment.  This is a permanent, full-time position. You can work from our central office in San Francisco, or anywhere in the world (like many of our team members).

RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Design, implement, and maintain advanced graphics technologies for our projects
  • Lead the performance and memory optimization efforts on our games including profiling and analysis
  • Establish performance budgets for game content across all platforms
  • Develop automated performance testing tools and processes 
  • Write, maintain and document stable and reliable code

QUALIFICATIONS

  • 5+ years experience shipping games on a variety of platforms (or equivalent)
  • Knowledge of DirectX 11/12, OpenGL, Vulkan, or Metal
  • Expertise in GPU hardware architecture, graphics APIs, and shading languages
  • Deep understanding of GPU and CPU performance characteristics and optimization techniques
  • Experience with modern 3D graphics engines, writing shaders and collaborating with artists on developing rendering technologies
  • Extensive experience with graphics performance profiling and optimization
  • Strong understanding of 3D math fundamentals

PREFERENCES

  • PlayStation, XBox and Switch experience
  • Familiarity with Unity & C# experience
  • Previous experience working closely with a multidisciplinary team
  • Experience with mobile and handheld devices

We want to make games for the world. We believe the best way to do that is to hire and support the most talented and creative people of diverse backgrounds to work together. It’s also why we provide $2,000 every year to each person to spend on self-improvement through conferences, books, classes, etc. We are proud of our diversity and are excited to make our team even better.

Unknown Worlds Entertainment, Inc. is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.

Apply for this position

Senior 3D Environment Artist

Unknown Worlds is seeking an accomplished 3D environment artist to work on a new unannounced franchise.  Our ideal candidate will possess strong sculpting skills and have a passion for creating and texturing natural environments and vegetation.  They will have experience with end to end art pipelines -  working from initial concept drawings through modeling, texturing, polish and optimization.   This is a remote position on a fully remote team.

Responsibilities

  • Collaborate closely with the concept team and other environment artists to create stunning, expressive 3D environments and bring our game worlds to life
  • Work with the art team to refine and improve our art pipelines and workflows
  • Work with graphics programmers to develop new systems and techniques and help manage texture and shader efficiency
  • Assist with integration of art assets into the game

Qualifications

  • 3+ years experience as a 3D artist in the games industry with minimum one shipped title
  • High level of proficiency with Max, Maya or Blender, Z-Brush, and Substance Designer & Painter
  • Skilled at texturing and developing materials in Substance Designer
  • Skilled at sculpting natural environments and vegetation
  • Strong written and verbal communication
  • Strong traditional drawing/painting or sculpting skills 
  • Self-starting, organized and highly motivated
  • Desire to contribute creatively to the development of our games outside of art

Preferences

  • Experience with Unity recommended
  • Experience with optimizing art for mobile and/or console
  •  Experience with other art subdisciplines a plus (animation, rigging, VFX)
  • Comfortable working with a completely remote team

We want to make games for the world. We believe the best way to do that is to hire and support the most talented and creative people of diverse backgrounds to work together. It’s also why we provide $2,000 every year to each person to spend on self-improvement through conferences, books, classes, etc. We are proud of our diversity and are excited to make our team even better.

Unknown Worlds Entertainment, Inc. is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.

Apply for this position

Systems Programmer

As a systems programmer on the Subnautica team, your primary responsibility will be to help the team ship high-quality software on multiple platforms (PC, Xbox One, PS4).  

An ideal candidate has experience shipping games on a variety of platforms, preferably with strong Unity, C#, C++ and console experience.  The ability to tackle a wide range of problems - architecting key systems, performance analysis and optimization, maintaining editor tools - is a must.

We have a distributed team, self direction and good communication are important skills for success in this environment.  This is a permanent, full-time position. You can work from our central office in San Francisco, or anywhere in the world (like many of our team members).

REQUIREMENTS

  • 5+ years experience shipping games on a variety of platforms (or equivalent)
  • C# programming experience
  • Familiarity with Unity
  • Ability to optimize and work within the performance limitations of current platforms
  • Team player with good communication skills
  • Availability to go on global company retreats (Post COVID!)

We want to make games for the world. We believe the best way to do that is to hire and support the most talented and creative people of diverse backgrounds to work together. It’s also why we provide $2,000 every year to each person to spend on self-improvement through conferences, books, classes, etc. We are proud of our diversity and are excited to make our team even better.

Unknown Worlds Entertainment, Inc. is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.

Apply for this position

Who We Are

A long time ago, we created the Half-Life mod Natural Selection. We helped pioneer the “early access” model when we started bundling pre-orders with Overgrowth (now Humble). We created our own technology (Spark) and used it to build Natural Selection 2 for Steam.

We recently released Subnautica which is our biggest game to date (6M+ copies, Steam, Epic, Discord, XB1, PS4). Shipping early and often is in our blood.

How We Work

We hang out in Slack. We meet regularly via videoconferencing. No one is micro-managed, team members are encouraged to be self-directed and apply their creativity to our projects. We also have regular full-team retreats in sunny gorgeous places all over the world. We rent a sweet house, fly the whole team there and spend a week swimming, gaming, drinking wine and giving micro-talks (similar to these).

Who you are

Our ideal candidate is passionate, self-motivated, versatile and eager to learn new skills. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate on all aspects of the games we’re creating. The team works together to set the high level goals for each milestone, then each person determines how they can best contribute to achieving the objective. This type of approach doesn’t work for everyone, but for us, it’s thrilling.

Diversity & Inclusion

At Unknown Worlds, we pride ourselves on being a globally based and represented team. As such, we are committed to diversity as one of our core values. However, we also have the responsibility to ensure that our values translate into concrete actions: what games we make, how we make them, and how we hire our people. We pledge to carry out this effort in earnest, with an open mind and with the intention to improve this industry for everyone. We’re dedicated to working towards that goal in many ways, and improve some things we’re already doing. We believe this is long overdue, and will ultimately broaden the perspective and creativity of our games. We understand that this means on-going commitment, education, discussion, and outside advice where necessary.

Our Commitments

The following commitments are not comprehensive (our aim is progress, not perfection!), but represent what we intend to develop, improve, and build on over time.

  • We are committed to making games that speak to a diverse audience and promote shared experiences across differences in age, race, gender, sexuality, and mental or physical ability.
  • We will continue to commit a portion of Unknown Worlds’ yearly profits to charitable organizations.
  • We will continue to reserve time each year for full-time team members to volunteer-work of their choosing.
  • We are committed to supporting policies and organizations that build equity for marginalized groups.
  • We are committed to building an inclusive workplace where we combat perfectionism with a culture of appreciation, understand the connection between defensiveness and fear, and value teamwork over individualism.
  • We will continue to provide an annual education budget for full-time team members for their continued development.
  • We are committed to looking at our team’s diversity at all levels, including ways in which we can make the hiring and game development processes more inclusive.
  • We are committed to reviewing our business network to include partners from diverse backgrounds.

Organizations We Support

We have always felt strongly about giving back to communities and causes that reflect our values, and every year our team works together to choose them. Below are some of the organizations we currently support, either through donations, sponsorship, volunteering, or partnership.

  • Action Against Hunger. This donation was made possible thanks to all of the incredible members of the Subnautica community who participated in the ‘Go Play Inside’ bundle back in April 2020. The funds will be put towards expanding water, sanitation, hygiene, and health programs in hard-to-reach areas and vulnerable communities, who have been deeply affected by the pandemic.
  • San Francisco-Marin Food Bank. With an office based in San Francisco, we wanted to give back to our local community, for those facing food scarcity in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. As the premier legal organization in America fighting for racial justice, through litigation, advocacy, and public education, we wanted to contribute to help the LDF continue to seek structural changes and work towards their goal of equality for all Americans.
  • Game Devs of Color Expo as a Collaborating Sponsor. The Game Devs of Color Expo is a space to enlighten and unite people of all genders, races, abilities, sexual orientations and religions.The 2020 Expo was fully virtual, due to the pandemic, and seeked to help new and experienced game developers share, learn and connect in unique ways.
  • National Center for Transgender Equality. Working at the local, state, and federal levels to change laws, policies and society, the NCTE seeks to replace disrespect, discrimination, and violence with empathy, opportunity, and justice for transgender people.