The job seeker's journey with Unity

What is Unity?

What can Unity do?

The real-time production cycle

Roles and careers for real-time creators

How our established creators learned Unity

Develop your learning plan

Next steps on your journey

In this tutorial, you’ll learn about the Unity engine: why it’s sometimes referred to as a game engine, how it came to be, and how it has evolved over the years.

Overview

What is a game engine?

What do you do in a game engine?

What don’t you do in a game engine?

The Unity Story

Next steps

In this tutorial, you will learn about career and job opportunities in real-time production, ranging from entry- to director-level positions. You will learn about the disciplines of Art and Design as well as Programming. You will see what a typical workday looks like for someone in each of these fields. You will also learn what it looks like to work as a Unity generalist, never specializing exclusively in one particular discipline. 

Careers in Art and Design

Careers in Programming

Careers as a generalist

What will be your path?

Summary

By now, you might have some thoughts on potential projects or careers that would put your Unity skills to good use. You’re embarking on a journey of learning Unity, and along the way you want to challenge yourself — but not take on too much. In this tutorial, our established creators will talk about their early projects, the challenges they overcame, and the career paths they followed.  

Be realistic

Be patient

Stick with it

Join the communities

Explore game jams

In this tutorial, you will learn more about setting goals for learning Unity, To help you reach your goals, we invite you to create a learning action plan.

Inspiration for identifying your goal

Identify your goal

Complete your plan

Share your Plan 

Interested in learning more about jobs in real-time 3D? New to Unity, and wondering how to start a serious course of learning? Then you're in the right place.

In this course, you'll learn how to learn Unity the way professionals do. You'll also find out about some real-time 3D industry practices, roles, and responsibilities. Along the way, you'll hear from real-time 3D creators who have been at the beginning of their journey, just like you are — and have become professionals.

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Job seeker's guide to learning Unity

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Understand Unity’s history and role in industries that rely on real-time creation.

Real-time Industry Essentials

NealEdu

Product Manager at Unity

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Designed for post-secondary and K-12 educators at accredited academic institutions teaching Unity in the classroom, the Unity Educator plan provides you with free access to the same real-time 3D development tools used by professionals to support your students.

Included in this plan are Unity Pro, cloud-based collaboration, cloud build, free Unity assets, and much more!

Unity Essentials Pathway Facilitator Kit.zip

Unity Essentials Pathway Facilitator Kit (Google Drive)

Unity Educator Hub

The Unity Essentials Facilitator Kit includes everything you need to successfully bring this Pathway into your learning context including a syllabus, complete lesson plans, standards alignment, teacher preparation guide, and more. 

Games

Film

Automotive

Explain what the Unity real-time engine does.

Describe how real-time creation software is used in different industries.

Identify a variety of real-time creators by their usage of Unity or their job role.

Explain what a real-time game engine is and how it is used.

1.1 Define the term “real-time.”

1.2 Explain what the Unity real-time engine does.

1.3 Describe how real-time creation software is used in different industries.

1.4 Identify a variety of real-time creators by their usage of Unity or their job role.

1.5 Explain what a real-time game engine is and how it is used.

Understand Unity’s history and role within the industries that rely on real-time creation.

Explain the steps of the real-time production cycle.

Explain the content creation tools that work with Unity to support real-time production.

Define various job roles involved in the real-time production cycle.

2.1 Explain the steps of the real-time production cycle.

2.2 Explain the content creation tools that work with Unity to support real-time production.

2.3 Define various job roles involved in the real-time production cycle.

Describe the real-time production cycle

The real-time industry

VR Curricular Framework Resources

AR Curricular Framework Resources 

Game Design Curricular Framework Resources  

Architecture, Engineering and Construction Curricular Framework Resources

Unity for Artists Curricular Framework Resources

AI, ML Curricular Framework Resources 

Before you continue your learning journey with Unity, you should understand the landscape of career opportunities that become available as you develop skills in real-time creation. 

These opportunities fall into two broad categories: 

Art and Design: creating the look, sound, and feel of the project with modeling, animation, lighting, audio, and other effects 

Programming: creating the functionality of the project, including gameplay, networking, and artificial intelligence

Keep in mind that many jobs and lifelong careers span both Art and Design and Programming. Each area is described in this tutorial.

Watch the video below to hear about the diverse career paths of some of our established creators. 

Jobs in Art and Design are found across all industries that rely on real-time production, such as Games, Media and Entertainment, AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction), and ATM (Automotive, Transportation, and Manufacturing). People in these roles define and create the aesthetic of a project through visuals, audio, and the overall experience. As you learned in the previous tutorial, these jobs often require the use of 3D, 2D and audio DCCs (Digital Content Creation tools) for generating assets. Many of these professionals are also experts at using Unity to create visual effects such as lighting, shading, and rendering. 

Below is a list of typical job titles and brief descriptions for those titles. For more detailed descriptions of each role, see the document Careers in Art and Design. 

3D artist: create 3D objects and backgrounds; optimize graphics performance

2D artist: create 2D objects and backgrounds; optimize graphics performance; create storyboards and concept images

Lighting artist: develop optimized lighting effects; create post-processing effects such as bloom, ambient occlusion, depth of field, and color correction

Audio designer: create and implement sound effects, voice overs, and music

Character artist: sculpt and model characters and their assets such as hair, accessories, armor, and weapons

Technical artist: work with artists and programmers to implement their work within the final product

Visual Effects artist: create realistic and stylized visual effects, such as lava, smoke, and fire; implement physical properties such as collisions and falling

Animator: create and optimize high-quality animation of all moving characters and objects; ensure that lighting and visual effects operate well in motion

Game / Level Designer: construct and implement gameplay; conduct playtesting and implement feedback; validate playability with the testers, level artists, and gameplay programmers

What does a typical day look like in Art and Design?

Although each of the jobs above has a completely different description, they all share some high-level goals and expectations in their role on a team. For example, all are expected to work closely with people on other teams, to balance quality with performance, and to ensure the functionality of the assets they produce. 

Watch the video below to hear about a typical day from people working in these industries.

What does a typical career path look like in Art and Design?

Professionals in Art and Design roles tend to begin as entry-level or “junior” artists, then drop the “junior” from their title after a few years, and finally become “senior” artists. Along the way, there could be opportunities to veer into project or pipeline management, and at the end of these paths, there may be opportunities to become a supervisor or a creative director.

The diagram above is an average career path in Art and Design, but most people have unique and often unconventional journeys to get to where they end up.

What other skills are useful in Art and Design?

In addition to the skills directly related to Art and Design, there are non-technical skills that will also be helpful. When you are creating experiences for users, your overall goal is to put users’ needs first — even though other priorities will come into play, such as cost and technical performance. When you put users first, some key skills you will need include:

Research and analysis: identifying who you are designing for, researching user wants and pain points

Collaboration: proposing multiple art and design ideas and receiving feedback to identify the best approach; listening to understand others’ points of view; working well on a team

Communication: expressing your ideas clearly; providing actionable and constructive feedback to others   

Do some research on Google and LinkedIn to find at least two profiles of professionals working at a senior or director level in Art and Design at a company you admire. Track their job titles from the start of their career to now. What is similar in the paths they took? What is unique? 

If you discovered any particularly helpful patterns, share them in the comments.

Diagram displaying a sample career path for an artist in the real-time 3D industry, including typical job titles and the amount of time a person might hold those titles. At the start of the path on the left is “Junior Artist (1-2 years)” followed by “Artist (3-5 years)” followed by “Senior Artist (6-7+ years)” followed by “Creative Director.” There is also a branch of the path beneath this primary path for “Project Manager.”

As in Art and Design, jobs in Programming are found across all industries that rely on real-time production. People in these roles spend most of their time writing and revising code, researching new programming techniques and frameworks, and optimizing their projects for performance. 

Below is a list of typical job titles and sample descriptions for those titles. For more detailed descriptions of each role, see the document Careers in Programming. 

Note: the terms “Programmer,” “Developer,” and “Engineer” are sometimes used interchangeably, and other times have different meanings to different people. Some suggest that “Programmer” is a more junior role and “Engineer” is a more senior or specialized one.

Quality assurance technician: find and report bugs; write test cases and plans

Programmer analyst: write code based on documented design; modify applications to maintain functionality

C# developer: develop new features and applications; manage the release of products 

Unity engineer: develop new features and applications using Unity

Research engineer: design, implement, analyze, and optimize state-of-the-art algorithms

Software developer: design, develop, test, and release new features and tools

VR / AR developer: prototype and build next generation VR/AR products; deploy and maintain VR/AR applications; stay current on the latest trends in VR/AR

Mobile developer: develop new mobile features and applications; stay current on mobile technologies 

UI / interface programmer: code user interfaces to meet the intent of the project's design and flow; integrate UI systems into features

Gameplay programmer: analyze and understand the game design documents; develop gameplay systems such player’s action, character’s behavior, game elements, and game progression

What does a typical day look like in Programming?

There is a wide range of responsibilities in the job descriptions above, but most typical days include coding, using systematic thinking to solve challenges, and optimizing systems for performance. 

Watch the video below to hear about a typical day from people working in this field. 

What does a typical career path look like in Programming?

Professionals in Programming roles tend to begin as junior programmers or analysts. They might specialize in a particular platform (e.g., mobile developer) or discipline (e.g., network engineer) as they gain more experience. They may eventually find opportunities to become technical or development directors. People who begin in development can also pursue careers in product or project management. 

What other skills are useful in Programming?

As with careers in Art and Design, in Programming there are also non-technical skills that will help you succeed. The non-technical skills you should think about for a career in programming include:

Critical thinking and problem solving: looking for problems users are facing and opportunities to deliver more value to your users;

Communication: expressing your ideas clearly; providing actionable and constructive feedback in code reviews

Collaboration: listening to understand the ideas of others; receiving feedback; working well on a team  

Do some research on Google and LinkedIn to find at least two profiles of professionals working at a senior or director level in programming at a company you admire. Track their job titles from the start of their career to where they are working currently. What is similar in the paths they took? What is unique? 

Diagram displaying a sample career path for a developer in the real-time 3D industry, including typical job titles and the amount of time a person might hold those titles. At the start of the path on the left is “Junior Programmer (1-2 years)” followed by “C# / Mobile / VR etc Developer (3-5 years)” followed by “Senior Network / Graphics / AI / etc Engineer (6-7+ years)” followed by “Technical / Development Director.” There is also a branch of the path beneath this primary path for “Project Manager.”

A Unity generalist practices Art and Design as well as Programming so they can create practically anything in Unity. Unity generalists are comfortable working with both art and code, integrating them into a Unity project, optimizing project performance, and publishing a product for its target platform. Not only should they be comfortable working across disciplines, but also across production phases: prototyping in pre-production, building in production, optimizing in post-production, and launching into operations. Becoming a Unity generalist can be an appealing goal if you want to work alone or in small teams, since you are not as dependent on people with other skill sets to take a project from start to finish. 

A Unity generalist is often expected to be a one-person team, with the ability to take a particular concept and bring it to life in Unity. Luckily, real-time development in Unity, combined with resources like the Unity Asset Store, allow individuals to create polished, full-featured projects surprisingly quickly. Unity generalists are more likely to work in smaller studios, or on a small team in an organization otherwise not dedicated to real-time production. The broad skillset of a Unity generalist opens doors to adjacent career opportunities in QA, producing, training, or specializing further in art or development.

Watch the video below to hear which skillsets a small team would typically need to produce a real-time 3D project. 

What other skills are useful to generalists?

As a generalist, there are many non-technical skills you will use to make sure you are putting users first and creating experiences for a diverse and varied user base. As you proceed with your Unity learning journey, you will learn in detail how to implement the following skills: 

Project management: organizing and planning across platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media in order to deliver your product.

Research and Analysis: planning, researching, and curating information from a variety of sources to inform creative decisions. 

Critical thinking and problem solving: identifying strategies to understand problems, and solve them, and test proposed solutions.

Watch this video about impressive indie games made with Unity and look up one of the studios you see featured. Look up the bios of a few of the developers on the teams to see if you can find any Unity generalists.

What will you pursue as a Unity creator? Do you see yourself more as a programmer, artist/designer, or generalist? In the next video, we asked our established creators whether they have one area of expertise, or consider themselves as generalists.

Now, let’s hear from our creators on how, why, and when they specialized. 

Deciding on a specialty, or deciding to become a generalist, can take time, whether it’s in school, in your career, or in Unity.  You might even change your mind later in the journey. Watch the video below to hear how the career paths of our established creators took some surprising twists and turns.

As you listened to these creators’ stories, what stood out to you? Which stories inspire you? Which ones do you expect will be like your story in the future? Think about what that tells you about the direction you want to go in learning Unity, and if you’re willing, share your insights in the comments!

In this tutorial, you learned about specific job titles and career pathways for real-time creators. You learned what a typical workday looks like for someone in these fields to get a clearer picture of what it would be like to work in the real-time industry.

Take time to think about your goals for using Unity, and keep them in mind as you progress through your learning journey. Everything you learn, no matter how small, brings you one step closer to what you want to accomplish.

Roles and careers for real-time creators

1. Overview

2. Careers in Art and Design

3. Careers in Programming

4. Careers as a generalist

5. What will be your path?

6. Summary

Complete this tutorial