iRacing Motorsport Simulations, LLC. is hiring: Audio Sound Designer in Californ

iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations, LLC, the world’s leading and most authentic PC-based racing simulation, is seeking an Audio Sound Designer with a strong proficiency in designing and implementing interactive audio that enhances gameplay, feedback, and player immersion to join our team.

The Position

As a Technical Sound Designer, you will be part of a team that is responsible for the creation of sonic engine models from processing raw audio data to implementation, some experience in field recording would be helpful. You will also be working with our game developers on racing tiles for various platforms including PC and consoles. Each title has its own audio pipeline, so you will need to adapt to different methods of implementation ranging from editing script values to using FMOD Studio. Your involvement with these systems will be comprehensive and you will work with our simulator engineers, sound designers and recordists to create the sound assets that continuously push the quality of iRacing and its titles forward. Additionally, to make great audio, we work closely with our audio software engineers in developing great tools to author and implement our audio assets. You will support their efforts as well as the overall sonic requirements of the sim/game itself. At iRacing we feel that audio immersion is equally as important as graphical immersion, and our candidate should have a passion for race cars, audio production and gaming/simulation.production, and gaming/simulation.

Qualifications

• 5+ years professional sound design background
• Experience developing sonic models (static, modulated, granular and loop based) in the gaming space
• Proficient skills in using DAW, DSP and audio plug-ins
• Experience with FMOD Studio or equivalent audio middleware
• Experience mixing different channels of audio to achieve pleasant results
• Experience working to schedules with clear communication
• Use of build tools and test sounds in bench testing apps and developer environments that require optimized system design

Preferred skills

• Experience working with DSPs e.g. granular synthesis, convolution reverb and spatial positioning.
  • Granular synthesis experience
  • Impulse responses
  • Using spatial effects such as reverb in a game environment
• Ability to learn new DAWs, plugins or bespoke audio tools.
• Editing audio data, multitrack markups and making sonic models using Adobe Audition
• Implementation, testing and perfecting the fidelity of the audio mix
• Some field recording experience
• Experience shipping a game title as a sound designer or technical sound designer
• Knowledge of and experience working with audio formats such as Ambisonics, Binaural, stereo, 32-Bit float & Mid/Side
• Awareness of Ray tracing or 3D positioning of sound
• Knowledge of audio engineering and sound-related physics
• An interest in motorsports and cars
• A passion for gaming or simulation
• Experience working in a collaborative environment

Role

• You will work alongside our audio team and developers on a range of racing titles.
  • Granular synthesis experience
  • Impulse responses
  • Using spatial effects such as reverb in a game environment
• On our flagship PC racing simulator, iRacing, your role would be to record, edit and implement sounds from raw recordings to fully developed, game-ready assets. In addition, your role will be assisting with the development of internal audio tools and DSP for complex spatial audio systems.
• In a broad sense, to add-on to our Xaudio2 sound system used in the iRacing simulation, we don’t use FMOD or Wwise in our sim. So, it’s a relatively new foundation to build on now that audio will have its own threaded domain. The console titles have DSP and some spatial dsp
• We are moving to using convolution using impulse responses (in car spaces, ping the tracks etc) for complex reverb/echo/resonances.
• Occlusion effects from objects and to obfuscate (including filters and amplitudes for direction of sound i.e. direction of the exhaust tips). A couple of our console titles have this already
• Headphone/Headset support for spatial effects (HRTF)
• make VR filters for head movements to mimic binaural arrays
• we might look at frequency/spectral analysis of our engine recordings and create granular synthesis playback of complex sounds such as engines.

An important part of the role would be to contribute to the creation, development and design of the audio system at an innovative level.

For the other racing titles, your role will involve designing sound effects for the game and implementing audio assets using audio middleware or a custom audio engine. In addition, you will be mixing and balancing the sound levels of assets, solving problems with clever audio routing and testing audio assets in-game. Your role is to cover most of the aspects of audio for these titles.

Benefits & Compensation:

In addition to competitive pay and benefits, we offer the opportunity to be part of a talented team building high-quality, immersive games for players worldwide.

Benefits Include:

• Health, dental, vision, and life insurance
• 401(k) and discretionary employer match
• Paid time off (vacation, personal, sick, and holidays)

Location, Working Conditions, & Eligibility:

This position is a full time remote within the United States.
Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States at the time of application.
We are unable to sponsor visas, or work permits for this role.