Technical Game Designer at Spellbrush (San Francisco, CA)

Spellbrush· San Francisco, CA·5d ago

Role details

Work type

Remote

Employment

Full-Time

Job description

Culture: A "no-compromise approach to well-balanced gameplay married to a truthful love of visual arts." The team is passionate about anime and making a good anime game.
Location & Remote: Offices in San Francisco, CA and Chiyoda City, Tokyo, Japan. Some roles are remote-friendly (remote from Tokyo/SF), while other roles are in-office.
Compensation: Competitive salaries ranging from $60K–$200K depending on role and seniority.
Engineering Culture: The team is 26% Research and 23% Technical, indicating a strong emphasis on AI research and engineering. The work involves cutting-edge generative AI and game development.
Team Size: Small (~30 people), offering high impact and ownership for early employees.

One-liner: Spellbrush is a generative AI studio and video game development company best known for creating niji・journey, a leading AI art tool focused on anime-style imagery.
Entity Type: Private (Seed stage)
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
Founded: 2018
Founders: Cory Li (CEO), Ruwen Liu (Co-Founder, Creative Director), Haitao Mao (Co-Founder, Game Developer)

Primary industry/industries: Generative AI, Video Games, Computer Games
Target customers: B2C (gamers, anime and art enthusiasts), B2B (artists, game developers)
Mission or purpose statement: "Making a good anime game" while investigating how AI can help human artists perform masterpieces in the complex medium of video games.

[niji・journey (にじジャーニー)]: A generative AI art tool specialized in anime and illustration styles, built on Midjourney’s technology. It is the company’s flagship product and a leading tool in its niche.
[Niji Video]: A recently released (July 2025) video generation AI tool that specializes in anime-style motion, expanding beyond static images.
[Unannounced Tactical Game]: A no-compromise approach to well-balanced turn-based tactics gameplay married to a love of visual arts, currently in development.

Valuation/Market Cap: Not publicly available (private company)
Key Metric: Total Funding of $245,000 across two seed rounds (2018). Annual revenue estimated at $800,000 (likely an underestimate given niji’s popularity).
Notable Investors/Partners: Y Combinator (Winter 2018 batch), with 2 investors in the first seed round and 1 in the second.
Growth Signals: Headcount grew +24% YoY to approximately 30 employees; LinkedIn followers grew +28.8% YoY to 3,377; active job postings increased +10% monthly; recent product launches (Niji Video) and news coverage (Kotaku feature on a tactical game).

Niche Dominance: niji・journey is the premier AI art tool for anime-style imagery, giving the company a strong moat in a specific creative vertical.
Talent Density: Team includes alumni from Midjourney, Meta, NVIDIA, SenseTime, and top game studios like Halfbrick.
Proximity to Midjourney: Deep partnership and shared technology stack with Midjourney, one of the leading AI image generation platforms.
Cross-Domain Expertise: Uniquely combines world-class generative AI research with high-quality game development.

Product Expansion: Moving from static image generation (niji・journey) to video generation (Niji Video), and ultimately to a full video game.
AI for Games: Investigating how AI can be used to help human artists create masterpieces in the complex medium of video games.
Talent Growth: Actively hiring across AI research, infrastructure, and game development roles, particularly in San Francisco and Tokyo.

Sources