Principal Rendering Technical Artist (Apex Legends)

Description & Requirements

Electronic Arts creates next-level entertainment experiences that inspire players and fans around the world. Here, everyone is part of the story. Part of a community that connects across the globe. A place where creativity thrives, new perspectives are invited, and ideas matter. A team where everyone makes play happen.

Founded in 2010, Respawn was created with the philosophy that when talented people have creative freedom, they’ll make extraordinary games that achieve the unexpected. Respawn Entertainment is the Academy Award-winning studio behind critically acclaimed multi-platform games Apex Legends, Titanfall, Titanfall 2, Star Wars™ Jedi: Fallen Order, Star Wars™ Jedi: Survivor, and Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond. As a collective of creative developers, we have launched some of the industry’s most critically and commercially successful games. We truly love what we do and want to share our passion with players worldwide.

We are looking for a Principal Technical Artist - Rendering to join our Apex Legends team to help design and deliver future-forward rendering and content creation capabilities. As a Principal Technical Artist on the project, you will be working within a multidisciplinary R&D group specifically focused on shaders, lighting, and asset authoring improvements. Our ideal candidate is not just an expert in their technical craft, but is an accomplished project manager who can pull together an initiative, drive its implementation, and carry it across the finish line into production.

Why Join Us?

• This role is an opportunity to participate in dedicated, long term R&D initiatives.
• As a Principal you will have broad agency to guide and deliver solutions as you see fit.
• This role will have a significant impact on our product and your work will be highly visible to our players.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and deliver new solutions that increase efficiency, capabilities, and quality for shaders and lighting across the game.
• Be a champion for technology that meets high performance expectations and technical constraints.
• Test and validate new rendering systems, set best practices, and train content teams on their use.
• Be a champion of high performance and optimization, establishing how to wring the most out of our systems and guiding our content teams with best practices.
• Build partnerships and collaborative efforts between multiple disciplines to achieve successful solutions.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of professional game development experience.
• Expertise in designing and implementing shaders that satisfy artistic workflows and performance goals.
• High level of proficiency with shader programming in HLSL, GLSL, or similar languages.
• Demonstrated ability to modify or implement shaders directly in a codebase without the use of a graphical editor.
• Broad knowledge of modern real time lighting techniques and problem spaces, and the ability to understand their impact and ramifications on art pipelines.
• Comfortable working with proprietary technology that ships on a wide range of platforms with performance as a top priority.
• Ability to design scalable solutions that adapt to specific hardware specs, ideally without incurring additional art authoring burden.
• Able to demonstrate a pragmatic approach to cost, risk, and tradeoffs when considering new technology.

Pay Transparency - North America

Compensation And Benefits

The ranges listed below are what EA in good faith expects to pay applicants for this role in these locations at the time of this posting. If you reside in a different location, a recruiter will advise on the applicable range and benefits. Pay offered will be determined based on a number of relevant business and candidate factors (e.g. education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, or business needs).

PAY RANGES

• British Columbia (depending on location e.g. Vancouver vs. Victoria) *$141,400 - $204,400 CAD
• California (depending on location e.g. Los Angeles vs. San Francisco) *$165,000 - $256,000 USD

Pay is just one part of the overall compensation at EA.

In the US, we offer a package of benefits including paid time off (3 weeks per year to start), 80 hours per year of sick time, 16 paid company holidays per year, 10 weeks paid time off to bond with baby, medical/dental/vision insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, and 401(k) to regular full-time employees. Certain roles may also be eligible for bonus and equity.

For Canada, we offer a package of benefits including vacation (3 weeks per year to start), 10 days per year of sick time, paid top-up to EI/QPIP benefits up to 100% of base salary when you welcome a new child (12 weeks for maternity, and 4 weeks for parental/adoption leave), extended health/dental/vision coverage, life insurance, disability insurance, retirement plan to regular full-time employees. Certain roles may also be eligible for bonus and equity.

About Electronic Arts

We’re proud to have an extensive portfolio of games and experiences, locations around the world, and opportunities across EA. We value adaptability, resilience, creativity, and curiosity. From leadership that brings out your potential, to creating space for learning and experimenting, we empower you to do great work and pursue opportunities for growth.

We adopt a holistic approach to our benefits programs, emphasizing physical, emotional, financial, career, and community wellness to support a balanced life. Our packages are tailored to meet local needs and may include healthcare coverage, mental well-being support, retirement savings, paid time off, family leaves, complimentary games, and more. We nurture environments where our teams can always bring their best to what they do.

Electronic Arts is an equal opportunity employer. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, genetic information, religion, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, marital status, family status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We will also consider employment qualified applicants with criminal records in accordance with applicable law. EA also makes workplace accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities as required by applicable law.