Job Description: Senior Technical Character Artist, VR

Join Axon and Be a Force for Good

At Axon, we're committed to our mission of Protecting Life. We stand at the forefront of tackling society's most pressing safety and justice challenges. Our approach combines innovative devices and cloud software into a comprehensive ecosystem, all driven by collaboration, empathy, and diverse perspectives from those we serve and work with. At Axon, you're not just a team member; you're a key player in a global mission to make a significant difference. We connect with candor and care, seeking out diverse perspectives from our customers, communities and each other. We are on a moonshot mission to reduce police-related gun violence by 50% over the course of 10 years.

Build VR Solutions for Social Good

Police primarily go through 40 hours of in-service training a year outside of the academy, and most of that time goes to topics like firearms and CPR recertification. There is not enough time to train on everything police need to be aware of. Officers who do learn a skill at in-service practice it once or twice, then are expected to remember it eight months later, under stress. Our goal is training that is more accessible, more memorable, and done more frequently. We call this "Roll Call" training: training that can be done before and after a shift to keep skills sharp.

Public-safety training is broken. Today's training is ineffective, not scalable, and expensive. Axon's VR team creates engaging, effective training with scenario feedback, including Community Engagement Training and less-lethal weapon training (like TASER), so officers are prepared to use alternatives to Use of Force.

Most police interactions are verbal and non-verbal, so we emphasize hand gestures and natural language processing. The trainee's body language, what they say, and how they say it all shape how they interact with NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) in the scenario. A trainer observes these interactions and gives feedback in a post-training debrief, and every product ties back into the Axon ecosystem through Axon Academy, Axon Evidence, Axon Performance, and Axon Standards.

Your Impact

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 that helps officers engage with the communities they serve with greater awareness and safety.

As one of the expanding members of Axon's VR team, the Senior Technical Character Artist is the bridge between art and technology for our NPCs. Because most training is a conversation, the believability of our characters carries the training. You will own character creation and character technology for our standalone-headset training simulators, from MetaHuman-based workflows to parametric clothing and materials, and help the rest of the art team deliver the best possible content under our technical restrictions. You will partner with Art, Engineering, Content, UX and User Research to deliver the best immersive quality for our trainings.

This is a senior role. We expect you to work independently, own your area end to end, and take direction from the Lead Technical Artist and the Art Director rather than needing day-to-day management.

We believe happy teams make the best products, so we foster a friendly, open, introspective team culture that encourages everyone to speak their mind, collaborate, and have fun. The team runs daily check-ins and open-format meetings, plus a weekly VR Happy Hour in headset. We spend a lot of time with law enforcement officers to learn about their needs and see the real impact of our work, and we work closely with our Axon Community Impact team and community subject experts so our content reflects the needs of both law enforcement and community.

Role Details

• Location: Seattle, WA
• Reports to: Art Director (Receives daily and core direction from Lead Tech Artist)
• Direct reports: None
• Level: L8
• Platform: VR training simulators on standalone headsets

What You'll Do

You will be a key member of the VR Art Team with a critical role in how our characters are built, clothed, and rendered. On any given day you may find yourself:

• Creating realistic human characters from concept through engine-ready assets
• Owning and evolving our MetaHuman-based character creation pipeline
• Building and maintaining parametric clothing workflows, including Chaos Cloth setup for clothing created inside Unreal Engine
• Skinning and weight-painting characters, and building corrective blendshapes
• Authoring materials and shaders, via node graphs or code, that hold up on mobile hardware (including custom URP shaders for skin, eyes, hair, and fabric)
• Optimizing characters for mobile: LODs, topology, bone and blendshape budgets, and texture atlasing
• Building tools and automation using AI toolsets to speed up character production
• Using AI-assisted tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, Tripo) to accelerate production without compromising quality
• Meeting visual targets within polygon, texture, and draw-call budgets
• Creating production pipelines that improve rapid integration and testing
• Documenting pipelines, setting standards, and communicating methods to other artists and software engineers
• Collaborating with Tech Art and the Animation team so characters rig, deform, and animate well
• Attending stand-ups and play tests to share progress and give notes on how the experience is playing

What You Bring

• Shipped at least one title as a Technical Character Artist or Character Artist
• Strong skills as a character artist, with a good eye for anatomy, form, and likeness
• Experience with the MetaHuman pipeline for character creation
• Experience with parametric clothing, including working knowledge of Chaos Cloth for creating clothing inside Unreal Engine
• Experience creating materials via graph or code
• Experience using AI-assisted workflows (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, Tripo)
• Experience building tools and automation using AI toolsets
• Experience with realistic human character work
• A portfolio demonstrating past work
• A track record of working independently and owning your deliverables, including in ambiguous environments
• Ability to work with cross-functional teams, including Engineering, Design, and Product

Requirements

• Portfolio showcasing the best of your work in character art and any other relevant materials
• 5+ years working in the gaming and/or VR industry
• 5+ years of Unity or Unreal game engine experience

Preferred

• Unity experience (strongly preferred)
• Experience with VR or mobile VR
• Unreal Engine experience
• Skinning and weight-painting expertise, including corrective blendshapes
• Blendshape and facial rig knowledge (ARKit-52 or similar)
• Sculpting and texturing tools (ZBrush, Substance Painter/Designer)
• Cloth authoring tools (Marvelous Designer) and hair or groom experience (cards)
• Custom URP shader experience for skin, eyes, hair, and fabric
• Mobile optimization experience: LODs, topology, bone and blendshape budgets, texture atlasing

Benefits That Benefit You

• Competitive salary and 401K with employer match
• Discretionary paid time off
• Robust parental leave policy
• An award-winning office and working environment
• Ride along with real police officers in real-life situations, explore a wide range of third-party VR content, get inspired
• Get paid to play
• And more