Join Axon and be a Force for Good.
At Axon, we’re on a mission to Protect Life. We’re explorers, pursuing society’s most critical safety and justice issues with our ecosystem of devices and cloud software. Like our products, we work better together. We connect with candor and care, seeking out diverse perspectives from our customers, communities and each other.
Life at Axon is fast-paced, challenging and meaningful. Here, you’ll take ownership and drive real change. Constantly grow as you work hard for a mission that matters at a company where you matter.
Your Impact
Build AR and VR Solutions for Social Good:
We are working with cutting edge technology and need your help to make it all come together. You will join an interdisciplinary team tackling the biggest challenges in public safety training head-on, including immersive VR based empathy, coping and de-escalation training to help officers engage with the communities they serve, with greater awareness and safety.
As one of the expanding members of the Axon’s AR/VR team, the Technical Artist will be that bridge between art and technical. They will elevate the visuals of our projects through inventive and efficient shaders while helping the rest of the art team deliver the best possible content under our technical restrictions. This role will partner with engineering, content, UX and user research to create the best visual immersive quality products for our trainings.
Our AR/VR Team
We believe that happy teams make the best products, so we foster a friendly, open, introspective team culture that encourages everyone to speak their mind, collaborate together, and have fun. The team conducts daily check-ins, open format meetings, as well as a weekly VR Happy Hour in headset!
We believe we can only succeed if we deeply understand our customers and get to know them. We spend a lot of time with law enforcement officers to learn about their needs, watch their experience and see the real impact of our work. We also work closely with our Axon Community Impact team, along with other community subject experts to create our content and curriculum to reflect the needs of both law enforcement + community.
What about the day-to-day?
You will focus on supporting the Art team to help push for more efficient workflows and help push for shaders, materials, and art asset prototypes so they can realize their work, and be a strategic partner to Art, UX, Product Management and Engineering. On any given day you may find yourself:
- Creating production pipelines to improve rapid integration and testing
- Managing a team of tech artists
- Communicating pipelines and methods to other artist and software engineers
- Getting into headset to see how the assets are rendering and to give notes to an engineer
- Optimizing tools and plugins to work effectively in game engines
- Teach another artist how to implement their work quickly and iteratively
- Feeling comfortable with shader development using node based graphs as well as coding
- Answering a question from a Product Manager about a complex skin shader
- Attending standup in VR and sharing with the XR team (standing around you as avatars) your daily update
- Modifying and optimize assets based on subject matter expert feedback, animation needs, or technical limitations
- Work with engineers and technical artist to define and improve our asset pipeline
- Collaborate with the Art Director and Narrative Designer to prototype custom pipelines to meet project objectives
- Learning about the latest trends/experiences in XR —experimenting with them yourself
What You’ll Do
You will be a key member of the VR Art Team, working to deliver new experiences and technologies that will help in the development of our core shipping products. You will be a strategic partner with an emphasis on being a bridge between the Art and Engineering teams. On any given day you may find yourself:
- Defining and evolving the Art pipeline
- Ensuring that Art Assets meet performance and visual fidelity requirements
- Designing and implementing complex skeletons and control rigs
- Developing, deploying, and maintaining procedural tools and workflows to improve production efficiency
- Optimizing assets and content creation workflows through improved tooling
- Identifying potential production issues and proposing solutions to keep production moving
- Instructing artists on asset creation, modeling, and texturing best practices
- Planning and defining the Art roadmap requirements with the Art Director and Producer in a well-organized manner
- Interacting and collaborating with the cross functional departments (Product, Engineering, Marketing)
What You Bring
- 7+ years of experience in Games or VR development as a Technical Artist.
- Strong background in rigging and skinning complex character assets
- Experience with C# and familiarity with the Maya API
- Experience working with shaders
- Deep experience building and shipping customer facing applications in Unity
- Competency in standard industry tools including Maya, Blender, Houdini, Substance, Photoshop
- Have a proactive work ethic, a capable problem solver who is not afraid of big challenges. Candidate must be able to quickly identify issues and resolve them.
- Document tools and processes required to educate artists on new tools or workflows.
- Experience collaborating with Art and Design teams to integrate models, animations, shaders, audio, and UI.
- Experience profiling and achieving technical, optimization, render, and implementation constraints is a plus
- Works effectively with cross-functional teams including teams of multiple engineers and QA.
- Experience leading a team of Tech Artists / Developers
- Experience creating titles on multiple platforms (Oculus /Hololens/ Game Consoles) or for mobile (Android / iOS) preferred but not required.
Benefits That Benefit You
- Competitive salary and 401K with employer match.
- Discretionary paid time off.
- Robust parental leave policy.
- An award-winning office/working environment.
- Ride along with real police officers in real life situations, explore wide range of third-party VR content, get inspired.
- Get paid to play
- And more...
The Pay: Axon is a total compensation company, meaning compensation is made up of base pay, bonus, and stock awards. The starting base pay for this role is between USD 111,000 in the lowest geographic market and USD 213,000 in the highest geographic market. The on target earnings range for this role is between USD 159,000 in the lowest geographic market and USD 306,000 in the highest geographic market. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: level, function, training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, geographic market, and often a combination of all these factors. Our benefits offer an array of options to help support you physically, financially and emotionally through the big milestones and in your everyday life. To see more details on our benefits offerings please visit www.axon.com/careers/benefits.
#LI-Remote
Don’t meet every single requirement? That’s ok. At Axon, we Aim Far. We think big with a long-term view because we want to reinvent the world to be a safer, better place. We are also committed to building diverse teams that reflect the communities we serve.
Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they check every box in the job description. If you’re excited about this role and our mission to Protect Life but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification listed here, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.
Important Notes
The above job description is not intended as, nor should it be construed as, exhaustive of all duties, responsibilities, skills, efforts, or working conditions associated with this job. The job description may change or be supplemented at any time in accordance with business needs and conditions.
Some roles may also require legal eligibility to work in a firearms environment.
Axon’s mission is to Protect Life and is committed to the well-being and safety of its employees as well as Axon’s impact on the environment. All Axon employees must be aware of and committed to the appropriate environmental, health, and safety regulations, policies, and procedures. Axon employees are empowered to report safety concerns as they arise and activities potentially impacting the environment.
We are an equal opportunity employer that promotes justice, advances equity, values diversity and fosters inclusion. We’re committed to hiring the best talent — regardless of race, creed, color, ancestry, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship status, marital status, disability, gender identity, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances — and empowering all of our employees so they can do their best work. If you have a disability or special need that requires assistance or accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please email [email protected]. Please note that this email address is for accommodation purposes only. Axon will not respond to inquiries for other purposes.
