Art Director, Virtual/Augmented Reality
Our mission is to protect life.
We’re out to make the world a safer place by solving big problems and taking on the public safety challenges of our time. From our company's inception building the TASER device to a full suite of hardware and software solutions, we are focused on providing police agencies with state-of-the-art devices and services they need to successfully serve and protect us. In the next few years, we're going to eliminate the burden of paperwork in policing, so officers can increase the time they spend building relationships and serving in their communities. We’ll put video at the heart of police records so our justice system can get to the truth faster. And we won't stop innovating until the bullet is rendered obsolete.
It’s a big mission, but it’s one we’ll pursue relentlessly every single day.
Your ImpactBuild 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 founding members of the Axon’s AR/VR team, the Art Director will be responsible for driving the artistic vision; concept of characters, machinery and environment; directing 3D and animation. You will lead a team of 3D and tech artists, animators, and sound design to set the visual experience quality bar for our XR applications. 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 Culture
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 has weekly VR happy hours 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.
Your Day-to-Day
You will lead a team of artists, defining the art style, be a resource for techniques and tools, and be a strategic partner to UX, Product Management and Engineering. On any given day you may find yourself:
- Creating a series of storyboards for the next production shoot, and present to stakeholders for review.
- Talking to your team of artists about how to best address a technical constraint or optimize assets.
- Defining and driving the AR/VR visual guidelines and quality for both 2D & 3D art and UI.
- Brainstorming with your team about a new scenario and how to set the scene and characters.
- Answering a question from a Product Manager about lighting and shaders.
- Collaborating with narrative designers about an upcoming scenario.
- Defining and refining animated characters based on subject matter experts and customer feedback.
- Attending standup in VR and sharing with the XR team (standing around you as avatars) your daily update.
- Mentoring to one of your artists about how to improve the environment in the scene.
- Researching the latest trends/experiences in AR/VR —trying them out for yourself in headset.
- Getting into headset and reviewing the latest AR/VR build, talking to an engineer about a bug you found.
Basic Qualifications
- 7+ years experience leading 2D and 3D art on a game production team, with a portfolio to demonstrate your outstanding artistic accomplishments.
- Expert proficiency with tools such as Cinema 4D, Maya, Photoshop, or your design tool of choice, and the ability to quickly create visuals to support concept development and presentations to internal stakeholders.
- Experience guiding, evaluating, and redirecting the creative work for a team of artists, including defining goals, standards, processes and day-to-day feedback, as well as both formal and informal creative critique.
- Ability to define a high-caliber artistic vision, with outstanding visual and technical understanding in rendering and asset creation, relating to character and environmental design.
- In-depth understanding of art production processes, and experience with the full development cycle in multiple shipped titles (preferably 3D games).
- Expert understanding of art direction and storytelling, including concept art or story boarding.
- Knowledge of XR technical constraints, optimization and implementation.
- Works effectively with cross-functional teams.
- Ability to inspire and develop a dynamic and collaborative team environment.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience creating titles on XR platforms such as Hololens, Oculus, HTC Vive, or PlayStation VR.
- Technical understanding and experience working with engineers.
- Experience guiding audio direction
- A constant desire to learn, improve, and help others improve.
Compensation and Benefits
- 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...
We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.