Technical Artist – 3D & Animation (Godot/Unity)

Company Overview:

Castle Hill Gaming is currently seeking skilled professionals to join their team in Charlottesville, VA. Castle Hill Gaming is a prominent provider of Class II, Class III, and HHR gaming machines to Indian and Commercial Casinos across the United States, with offices located in Charlottesville, VA and Tulsa, OK. CHG offers exciting employment opportunities for individuals passionate about the gaming industry.

This is an exceptional chance to become part of a thriving organization with a strong market presence. Apply now to contribute to the growth of cutting-edge gaming solutions and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

We offer the following to our qualified full-time employees:

• A competitive salary
• Excellent benefits package including health insurance where the company pays
• Company contributions to employee HSA accounts
• 401K
• 20 days of paid time off that is accrued during the year along with 8 paid holidays
• Paid Leave including Paternal, Bereavement and Jury Duty
• Employee equity incentive plans
• Company Cell Phone for all employees

Position Overview:

We are seeking a Technical Artist with strong 3D art and animation expertise to serve as the bridge between Art and Engineering. This role is responsible for implementing, optimizing, and maintaining high-quality visual assets and animation systems within either the Godot or Unity engine. The ideal candidate combines artistic talent with technical fluency, ensuring assets perform efficiently without compromising visual fidelity.

This position requires hands-on production experience in real-time pipelines, rigging, animation systems, shaders, and runtime optimization.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following:

• 3D Asset Integration & Optimization
• • Import, configure, and optimize 3D models, materials, and animations in Godot or Unity.
  • Develop and maintain asset pipelines from DCC tools (Blender, Maya, 3ds Max) to engine.
  • Ensure proper LOD implementation, batching strategies, and draw call optimization.
  • Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks related to art assets.
• Animation Systems
• • Implement animation controllers, blend trees, state machines, and animation events.
  • Support rigging workflows and troubleshoot skinning, weighting, and deformation issues.
  • Optimize animation performance for runtime efficiency.
  • Collaborate with animators to ensure seamless integration of character and environment animations.
• Shader & Materials Development
• • Create and maintain shaders using:
  • Unity Shader Graph / HLSL
  • Godot Shader Language
  • Build and maintain reusable material libraries.
  • Optimize lighting, post-processing, and rendering pipelines.
• Tools & Pipeline Development
• • Develop scripts and tools to automate repetitive tasks and streamline workflows.
  • Improve import/export processes and asset validation systems.
  • Document technical art standards and best practices.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
• • Work closely with Engineering to ensure performance and scalability.
  • Partner with Art to maintain visual consistency and technical feasibility.
  • Provide technical guidance to artists on engine constraints and optimization.

Work Environment:

• Open Office Environment
• Charlottesville, VA Headquarters

Core Competencies:

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Ability to translate artistic intent into optimized runtime solutions.
• Excellent communication skills with both technical and creative stakeholders.
• Detail-oriented with a focus on quality and performance.

Qualifications:

Required:

• 3+ years of experience as a Technical Artist or similar role in game development.
• Professional experience with Godot or Unity in shipped or production projects.
• Strong understanding of:
  • 3D modeling workflows
  • Rigging and skinning
  • Real-time animation systems
  • Rendering pipelines
• Experience with one or more DCC tools (Blender, Maya, 3ds Max).
• Knowledge of:
  • C# (Unity) or GDScript/C# (Godot)
  • Shader programming
  • Performance profiling tools
• Strong understanding of GPU/CPU performance considerations.

Preferred:

• Experience animating in Spine 2D
• Experience with Unity and/or Godot's built in animation tooling
• Experience with procedural animation or IK systems.
• Familiarity with VFX tools (Unity VFX Graph, Godot particles).
• Experience supporting mobile or cross-platform performance optimization.
• Knowledge of version control systems (Git, Plastic, Perforce).

Education, Training and Experience Required:

Preferred:

• Bachelor's degree in Game Development, Computer Graphics, Animation, or related field
• — OR equivalent professional experience.

If hired, your employer will be Ironworks Development LLC, which develops Castle Hill Gaming products. Correspondence with the company will only be made from Castlehillgaming.com e-mails addresses.

• This position is not limited to those duties listed in the job description. Duties and responsibilities can be changed, expanded, reduced, or deleted to meet the business needs of the company.

**Any offer and retainment of employment is contingent upon the successful completion of your background investigation, and the approval of any necessary tribal gaming license, granted by their respective gaming commission

*** We are not offering Visa sponsorship or transfers for this position, now or in the future.

****We kindly request that third-party recruiters or agencies refrain from submitting unsolicited resumes, candidate profiles, or making unsolicited contact. All hiring decisions are managed through our internal team, and no solicitation will be considered.