Roles and careers for real-time creators
Tutorial
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foundational
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+10XP
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15 mins
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(11778)
Unity Technologies

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.
Languages available:
1. Overview
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.
2. Careers in Art and Design
What jobs are there in Art and Design?
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
Exercise
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.
3. Careers in Programming
What jobs are there in programming?
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
Exercise
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?
If you discovered any particularly helpful patterns, share them in the comments.
4. Careers as a generalist
What is a Unity generalist?
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.
Where does a Unity generalist work?
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.
Exercise
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.
5. What will be your path?
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!
6. Summary
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.