Senior Technical Artist, VFX & Interaction Systems - Social VR
About the role
Senior Technical Artist responsible for VFX, animation polish, shaders, rigging, diegetic UI, and technical art implementation for Ruffnauts, a social VR game. Hands-on role in Unity (Quest-focused) with contract-to-hire arrangement.
Responsibilities
- Create, implement, and optimize stylized VFX for pets, movement, battling, summoning, petting, healing, recall, creature interactions, gameplay systems, terrain obstacles, and environmental interactables
- Polish pet animation, movement feedback, interaction timing, and in-game readability for VR
- Set up and polish IK, avatar hands, grab points, hand poses, finger poses, finger rotation, sockets, and object interaction poses
- Create and standardize UI/UX and in-world interaction feedback for interfaces, interactables, prompts, feedback states, shops, and player-facing systems
- Build shaders and materials using Unity Shader Graph, Amplify Shader Editor, or equivalent workflows
- Implement characters, pets, props, animated cosmetics, rewards, and interactables in Unity
- Build clean prefabs using existing scripts, animations, VFX, SFX, colliders, sockets, and gameplay hooks
- Make sure cosmetics work properly with avatars, hands, shops, previews, pickups, and player expression systems
- Optimize shaders, VFX, rigs, 3D assets, 2D assets, UI, materials, textures, and prefabs for Meta Quest performance
- Collaborate with artists, engineers, designers, and animators to turn rough ideas into shippable in-game systems
- Help define reusable standards for VFX, shaders, rigging, IK, cosmetics, prefabs, and art implementation
- Build and maintain lightweight Unity/C# tools, editor utilities, and automation to streamline content publishing
Qualifications
- 5+ years of professional technical art experience in games
- Strong Unity experience
- Strong experience with Unity Particle System, Shader Graph, Amplify Shader Editor, or similar tools
- Strong understanding of real-time rendering and Meta Quest optimization across 3D assets, 2D assets, VFX, UI, materials, shaders, textures, and prefabs
- Experience shipping content for VR, Meta Quest, mobile, or other constrained real-time platform
- Experience implementing and debugging game-ready prefabs, assets, VFX, shaders, and interaction feedback in Unity
- Experience with at least one of: rigging, skinning, IK, hand poses, sockets, constraints, or procedural animation systems
- Ability to create stylized, readable, performant VFX that support gameplay clarity
- Comfortable working hands-on in a small, fast-moving team
- Portfolio or reel showing technical art work, VFX, shaders, rigging, implementation, or shipped real-time content
Skills
About Vinci Games
Creating genre-defining multiplayer VR games.
Vinci Games (YC S22) is building the next generation of social multiplayer VR games. Our first title, Blacktop Hoops, became one of the highest-rated sports games on Meta Quest with a passionate global community and critical acclaim. Our second title, Ruffnauts, is already one of the fastest growing F2P releases of 2025 on Meta Quest, with 30K+ reviews at 4.9 stars in its first month of Alpha Early Access. Ruffnauts combines creature catching, chaotic physics, and Gorilla Tag style locomotion into a groundbreaking VR adventure. The company is led by CEO Nathaniel Ventura (ex-Oculus, Google, Meta) and CTO Maciej Szcześnik, former lead gameplay designer at CD Projekt Red for The Witcher series. Our mission is to create genre-defining VR experiences that bring millions of players together.
More open roles at Vinci Games
- Senior World / Level Designer & Artist - Social VR5mo agoHybrid (North America) · Engineering
- Lead 3D Artist - Social VR5mo agoHybrid (San Francisco, CA)