Senior Technical Artist II, Characters - Unannounced Game | Irvine, CA

Blizzard Entertainment • Irvine, CA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

At Blizzard, we craft genre‑defining games and legendary worlds for all to share. Through unparalleled creativity and technical excellence, we create immersive universes and iconic characters that are beloved across platforms, borders, backgrounds, and generations – only made possible by building a work environment that cultivates the artistry of game development and unleashes the aspirations of our people.
We are looking for a Senior Technical Artist, Characters to help craft a new, unannounced game for Blizzard. As a senior individual contributor on the team, you will play a critical role in defining, building, and maintaining high‑quality character rigging pipelines while ensuring runtime performance and scalability. You will partner closely with animation, character art, and engineering teams to deliver best‑in‑class character solutions and act as a technical leader within the character discipline.
This role is anticipated to be a hybrid work position, with some work on‑site and some work from home. The potential home studio for this role is Irvine, CA.

Requirements

• 12+ years of relevant professional experience as a technical artist on AAA game development teams.
• Proven experience shipping at least one major title in a character technical art or closely related role.
• Proven ability to work collaboratively within multidisciplinary teams and foster strong cross‑disciplinary partnerships.
• Demonstrated ability to take ownership of complex systems and drive solutions from concept through implementation.
• Deep knowledge of character animation technologies, including rigging, motion capture, retargeting, physics, runtime rigging, and vertex animation.
• Thorough understanding of anatomy, animation principles, and deformation techniques.
• Solid scripting experience, including proficiency with Python.
• In‑depth knowledge of AAA game engines with a strong understanding of art implementation and integration methods.
• Comprehensive understanding of modern art pipelines and best practices, including proficiency with industry‑standard 3D content creation tools.

Nice To Haves

• Experience working through early development and pre‑production phases of a project.
• Unreal Engine expertise.
• Ability to flex into other areas of technical art to achieve higher‑quality results.
• Passion for playing a wide variety of video games.

Responsibilities

• Help define and maintain standards and best practices for the character rigging pipeline across the project.
• Build high‑fidelity character rigs while balancing animation needs and runtime performance constraints.
• Serve as a technical problem‑solver and force multiplier by providing support to animators and other technical artists.
• Collaborate closely with character artists, animators, engineers, and production to ensure smooth pipeline integration.
• Mentor and guide other character technical artists, including internal team members and external partners.
• Diagnose, debug, and resolve complex character‑related technical issues across tools and runtime.
• Contribute to documentation, workflows, and pipeline improvements that scale across the team.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance;
• 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching;
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave;
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others;
• If the Company requires that you move geographic locations for the job, then you may also be eligible for relocation assistance.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed