Find More Than 10K+
United Kingdom Jobs

We have a fantastic opportunity for an experienced and ambitious VFX artist to join us and work on exciting new projects in our Total war franchise. This role will be based at our headquarters in Horsham, in the heart of West Sussex.

We are looking for a talented Lead VFX Artist to join our team and inspire the creative vision and world class results of VFX in Total War. You will be working on new projects with your highly skilled VFX artists in the mature and experienced Total War team. You will have the opportunity for personal and professional development alongside some of the best creatives in the industry with a huge impact on the game experience and visual spectacle across many titles.

Flexible working at Creative Assembly includes hybrid, fully remote within country of employment for eligible roles, and in-studio. We recognise that there is no one-size-fits-all approach and empower our teams to define the working patterns which work best for them, which may mean different things for different teams and roles and at different times.

This role is Hybrid and has an expectation of 2-3 days per week in our Horsham studio. This role cannot offer fully remote working. Further details can be discussed during the recruitment process.

Key Responsibilities

On a day-to-day basis, you will:

• Work with Art Directors across different projects to define the art style for VFX
• Create world class VFX content for previsualisation, benchmarks, and visual development
• Ensure the VFX team are empowered to create rich and varied effects and reach benchmark quality, with strong leadership and regular feedback
• Lead the VFX and lighting artists, and develop the team with training, mentorship and career development
• Collaborate on hiring plan, handle recruitment and onboarding of new hires
• Work with the production team to plan the VFX content and deliver VFX work on schedule and to the highest standards
• Maintain team health and wellbeing, whilst motivating the team to be productive and proactive
• Set art standards in conjunction with the technical teams to ensure the VFX are performant and consistent across all projects
• Research emerging visual effects technology, plan roadmap of technical improvements to keep competitive with industry trends
• Work closely with design, animation, and other teams to ensure VFX is fully integrated in the game experience
• Work with graphics, tools and other teams to build and maintain an efficient VFX and lighting pipeline
• Collaborate across the franchise to seek out opportunities to enrich the game further with VFX of various types and lighting effects.

Knowledge, Skill and Experience

Essential

• Extensive experience of working in game development. At least 3 shipped titles
• Extensive experience of real-time VFX authoring tools
• Expert knowledge of one or more 3d packages
• Strong knowledge of photoshop, substance, and other 2d editing or texturing software
• Ability to create animated textures, simulations, and associated related 2d content
• Ability to create meshes, shaders and materials, and associated content for mesh based VFX
• Basic animation understanding and skills to implement this in VFX for timing
• Experience in lighting and image processing
• Understanding of colour theory, visual design, and composition
• Proactive, results-oriented, practical approach, with excellent time management skills
• Understanding of VFX performance and experience planning and optimising for various platforms
• Excellent interpersonal and leadership skill
• Excellent proactive problem-solving skills
• Strong awareness of industry technology trends
• Love of games!

Desirable

• Experience of leading a team
• Experience on AAA titles
• Unreal/Unity or other commercial engine experience
• Experience developing FX for strategy games
• Technical understanding of rendering, lighting and physics
• Experience profiling and optimising games
• Knowledge of Houdini, Embergen, Pflow, thinking particles, tyflow, fumefx, phoenixfd or any offline rendering FX related tools or workflows
• Knowledge of destruction simulations
• Skills in HLSL or other shader languages.

Note: Applications for this role must include a portfolio/showreel (or link to a portfolio/showreel). Applications that do not have this information will not be considered.

About Creative Assembly

It’s an exciting time to be a part of our craft-led studio as we push boundaries, creating deep and detailed experiences that last.

Our teams are diverse from across the world, from trainees to industry veterans who constantly challenge us and make sure we are striving for the best within our games and our studio life. We are united through our shared values of Quality, Focus, Teamwork, Respect and Trust and we win awards for our culture and our people-centric approach, having won a Best Place to Work Award for six consecutive years. We invest in our people, the studio, and our projects. We are a company that’s secure and safe – you don’t need to worry about job security at CA.

We’ll give you the creative freedom, tools, support, and development to achieve your potential.

We have studio locations across Horsham, UK in Newcastle, UK and Sofia, Bulgaria. These include several bespoke state-of-the-art audio suites and a dedicated motion capture facility.

We offer many benefits to support you and your family including:

• Flexible working: hybrid, fully remote within country of employment for eligible roles, and in-studio working
  
• Work from Anywhere for a temporary period each year (restrictions apply such as VISAs)
  
• Enhanced holiday allowance, maternity and paternity breaks, flexibility with our core hours, and no-notice holidays
  
• Bespoke relocation package for you and your dependents, with support throughout the process from our dedicated Relocation Specialists
  
• Private medical and dental insurance, life insurance, permanent health insurance, critical illness cover and free health care screening
  
• Generous holiday allowance plus full studio closure over the Christmas and New Year period, and all UK Bank holidays
  
• Annual discretionary studio bonus
  
• Join our award-winning education and social responsibility programme; the Legacy Project, as an industry ambassador to mentor and educate others
  
• Defined career development pathways and personalised training support including SEGA Dev Day, internal masterclasses, prestigious creative workshops, on-site training with renowned specialists and global conference attendance
  
• Opportunity to join our Diversity and Inclusion Network – an employee-led group
  
• Season ticket travel loans and cycle to work scheme with free bike servicing and discounted car valet service on site
  
• Free games and merchandise plus access to our extensive games library
  
• Free breakfast in the studio every day - toast, bagels, pancakes, cereals, yoghurts, fresh fruit, smoothies, juices, milkshakes and more in our fully stocked kitchen
  
• Wellbeing support with an employee assistance programme and onsite confidential sessions
  
• In-studio heavily subsidised massage therapy
  
• Discounts for home technology, travel insurance, corporate gym membership, cinema tickets, holidays, trips out and Ikea vouchers, and many local businesses including estate agents
  
• Studio parties for you and your family; such as our Summer Festival, Christmas Party plus a separate Children’s Christmas Party. We also have Cinema days and wrap parties for game releases
  
• Studio community activities such as life drawing, creative writing, Pilates, Walking Challenges, Couch to 5k, basketball, game and movie evenings, board game club, 5-a-side football, CA Choir, Sword fighting (yes, sword fighting) and loads more.

Our studio sites have disabled access. We are an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, religion or belief.