Vinci Games

Senior World / Level Designer & Artist - Social VR Location: North America Remote / Hybrid in San Francisco preferred Type: Contract-to-hire, 4-month contract period Start Date: Immediate Compensation: $50 – $100 USD/hour depending on experience, availability, location, and scope. If converted to full-time, compensation may include salary, benefits, and equity. About Us Vinci Games is building the next generation of social virtual reality games. Our newest title, Ruffnauts, is a Pokémon-inspired social multiplayer VR game for kids where players ride collectible pets, explore alien worlds, hatch and upgrade companions, uncover secrets, and play with friends. It launched in Alpha on Meta Quest and has already grown to 61K+ reviews, making it the tenth highest-rated VR games of all time. Our first title, Blacktop Hoops, reached over 1M installs and maintains a 4.9-star rating across 23,000+ reviews an is the 33rd highest rated game on Meta Quest. Vinci Games was also selected as a 2026 Game Changer by GamesBeat, Nasdaq, Lightspeed, and industry judges as one of the Top 25 most innovative startups reshaping gaming and interactive media. We’re backed by Y Combinator, Makers Fund, and Kevin Lin, Co-Founder of Twitch, with team experience from CD Projekt RED, Oculus, Unity, Google, and Downpour Interactive. We’re a small, fast-moving, remote team with a rare combination of traction, ambition, and creative freedom. We build through rapid iteration, close contact with players, and bold creative swings on one of gaming’s most exciting new platforms. The Role We’re looking for a hands-on Senior World / Level Designer to shape the playable world, biomes, social hub, and traversal experience of Ruffnauts. This is an in-engine role focused on rapid prototyping, greyboxing, VR playtesting, and iteration. We need someone who can turn rough ideas into playable spaces in Blender and Unity, test them in headset, and improve them based on movement, feel, flow, scale, readability, replayability, and social interaction. Ruffnauts is built around expressive pet riding, social play, exploration, secrets, rewards, and movement mastery. You’ll design spaces that feel great to move through repeatedly: hubs, roads, biome entrances, shortcuts, vertical routes, traversal playgrounds, and pet-class-specific paths. We are not looking for a pure paper designer or high-level worldbuilding consultant. We need someone who can personally build playable spaces, test them, iterate quickly, and help drive them toward shippable quality. Contract-to-Hire Path: This is a contract-to-hire role with an initial 4-month contract period. We’ll have a 30-day ramp check-in and a conversion discussion around the 90-day mark. Depending on mutual fit, performance, business needs, and agreement on final terms, we may convert to full-time, extend the contract, or conclude the engagement at the end of the initial term. If fit is clear earlier, we’re open to converting sooner. What You’ll Do Rapid prototyping and greybox of VR worlds in Unity for a high speed exploration focused movement game Create a foundation for walking/climbing zones, riding zones, and transition zones within worlds in the game to ensure fun to traverse and explore.  Design and iterate the Ruffnauts social hub as a playful, readable, movement-friendly space Designing and sculpting roads, rails, hills, terrain obstacles, ramps, cliffs, tunnels, launch points, shortcuts, landmarks, racetracks, and momentum based traversal chains Create beginner-friendly paths, advanced skill lines, secrets, rewards, and discovery moments with points of interest and verticality in mind Design spaces for different pet movement archetypes along with pathways and secrets reachable through skill mastery Create in-world challenges and secrets for players to discover.  Build multiplayer spaces where players can see, follow, race, help, chase, and show off to each other Test frequently in headset and iterate based on VR feel, scale, com

Location: North America Remote / Hybrid in San Francisco preferred Type: Contract-to-hire, , 4-month contract period Start Date: Immediate Compensation: $75 – $125 USD/hour depending on experience, availability, location, and scope. This is a contract-to-hire role, with potential to convert to full-time. About Us Vinci Games (YC S22) is a Y Combinator backed startup building the next generation of social virtual reality games. Our newest title, Ruffnauts, is a Pokémon-inspired social multiplayer VR game for kids where players ride collectible pets, explore alien worlds, hatch and upgrade companions, uncover secrets, and play with friends. It launched in Alpha on Meta Quest and has already grown to 61K+ reviews, making it the tenth highest-rated VR game of all time. Our first title, Blacktop Hoops, reached over 1M installs and maintains a 4.9-star rating across 23,000+ reviews and is the 33rd highest rated game on Meta Quest. Vinci Games was also selected as a 2026 Game Changer by GamesBeat, Nasdaq, Lightspeed, and industry judges as one of the Top 25 most innovative startups reshaping gaming and interactive media. We’re backed by Y Combinator, Makers Fund, and Kevin Lin, co-founder of Twitch, with team experience from CD Projekt RED, Oculus, Unity, Google, and Downpour Interactive. We’re a small, fast-moving, remote team with a rare combination of traction, ambition, and creative freedom. We build through rapid iteration, close contact with players, and bold creative swings on one of gaming’s most exciting new platforms. The Role We’re looking for a hands-on Senior Technical Artist to own the VFX, pet animation polish, shaders, rigging, IK, cosmetics, diegetic UI, and technical art implementation for Ruffnauts. This is not a pure tools role or pipeline consultant role. You will personally build, implement, optimize, and ship player-facing art systems in Unity for a fast-moving social VR game on Meta Quest. This is a highly player-facing role: your work will be visible every time a player rides a pet, grabs an object, summons a creature, equips a cosmetic, or interacts with the world. Your work will touch pets, avatars, cosmetics, in-world interaction feedback, gameplay VFX, prefab setup, live ops content tooling, and performance. The ideal candidate is a technical art generalist who can move quickly, make practical tradeoffs, and help the game feel more polished, readable, magical, and performant in headset. Contract-to-Hire Path: This is a contract-to-hire role with an initial 4-month contract period. We’ll have a 30-day ramp check-in and a conversion discussion around the 90-day mark. Depending on mutual fit, performance, business needs, and agreement on final terms, we may convert to full-time, extend the contract, or conclude the engagement at the end of the initial term. If fit is clear earlier, we’re open to converting sooner. What You’ll Do Create, implement, and optimize stylized VFX for pets, movement, battling, summoning, petting, healing, recall, creature interactions, gameplay systems, terrain obstacles, and environmental interactables Polish pet animation, movement feedback, interaction timing, and in-game readability so pets feel responsive, expressive, and satisfying in VR Create practical quality gates for player-facing content, including asset validation checks, naming and folder conventions, prefab structure standards, Quest performance budgets, and “ready to ship” checklists. Set up and polish IK, avatar hands, grab points, hand poses, finger poses, finger rotation, sockets, and object interaction poses so held items feel natural in VR Create and standardize UI/UX and in-world interaction feedback for interfaces, interactables, prompts, feedback states, shops, and player-facing systems Build shaders and materials using Unity Shader Graph, Amplify Shader Editor, or equivalent workflows Implement characters, pets, props, animated cosmetics, rewards, and interactables in Unity Build clean prefabs using existin

Location: North America Remote / Hybrid in San Francisco preferred Type: Contract-to-hire, 4-month contract period Start Date: Immediate Compensation: $50 – $100 USD/hour depending on experience, availability, location, and scope. This is a contract-to-hire role, with potential to convert to full-time. About Us Vinci Games is building the next generation of social virtual reality experiences. Our newest title, Ruffnauts, is a Pokémon-inspired social multiplayer VR game for kids and teens where players ride collectible pets, explore alien worlds, collect rewards, hatch and upgrade pets, and play with friends. Ruffnauts launched in Alpha last year and has grown to 61K+ reviews, becoming one of the highest-rated social VR games in its category. It was originally built by a team of 4. Our first title, Blacktop Hoops, reached over 1M installs and maintains a 4.9-star rating across 23,000+ reviews. We’re backed by Y Combinator, Makers Fund, and Kevin Lin, Co-Founder of Twitch. Our indie team brings experience from CD Projekt RED, Oculus, Unity, Google, and Downpour Interactive. We are a small, fast-moving, remote team focused on building genre-defining social VR games through rapid iteration and real player feedback. The Role We’re looking for a hands-on Lead 3D Artist / Art Lead to raise the visual quality bar for Ruffnauts. This is not a pure art director role. You will personally create, polish, review, optimize, and ship stylized 3D assets for a fast-moving social VR game built for kids and teens. Your first mission will be helping us level up Ruffnauts’ worlds, pets, cosmetics, rewards, hub spaces, and game-ready assets as we prepare for a broader launch. You’ll be the day-to-day art owner for the game: someone with strong taste, fast execution, and the judgment to keep internal and external contributors visually aligned. The ideal candidate is a stylized 3D generalist with impeccable taste, strong execution speed, and the ability to work rapidly across multiple disciplines. You can make practical tradeoffs, ship appealing assets under real VR performance constraints, and take an idea from sketch to in-game implementation within the same day. Contract-to-Hire Path: This is a contract-to-hire role with an initial 4-month contract period. We’ll have a 30-day ramp check-in and a conversion discussion around the 90-day mark. Depending on mutual fit, performance, business needs, and agreement on final terms, we may convert to full-time, extend the contract, or conclude the engagement at the end of the initial term. If fit is clear earlier, we’re open to converting sooner. What You’ll Do Create, polish, and optimize stylized 3D assets for Ruffnauts including stylized creatures, environments, cosmetics, and more  Own day-to-day visual consistency and help raise the overall art quality bar across 2D, 3D, animations, VFX, and UI Improve worlds, biomes, hub spaces, props, cosmetics, pets, creatures, rewards, and shop items Review outsourced and contractor-created assets and give clear, actionable feedback Create simple briefs, references, and visual guidelines for internal and external contributors Bring assets into Unity and check scale, readability, performance, and implementation quality Collaborate with designers, engineers, animators, and technical artists to ensure assets are shippable on Meta Quest Make fast, pragmatic art decisions in a small team with shifting priorities and real player feedback Requirements Experience shipping optimized 3D content in a premium or F2P VR title on Meta Quest, PSVR2, or other VR platforms Strong portfolio of stylized, game-ready 3D art including character art and environment art on shipped indie, AA, or AAA titles Strong experience with Blender or similar tools Strong experience with Unity Strong modeling, texturing, material, and optimization skills Strong taste around stylized appeal, silhouette, color, readability, charm, and marketability Experience creating environments, props, cosmetics,