Full-Time Technical Vector Production Artist (Prepress & SVG Cleanup)

Compensation: $550 – $700 USD per month (depending on speed and technical accuracy)
Schedule: Full-Time (40 hours/week). Long-term role.
Time Zone: Monday–Friday. This work will provide flexibility to work primarily during the day in your local time zone.

About Us & The Role:
We are a U.S.-based ecommerce company that builds online apparel and merchandise collections for sports teams and community organizations. We are experiencing rapid growth and are building a high-volume production engine.

We are looking for a dedicated Technical Production Artist to join our team full-time. In this role, you will report directly to our Operations Lead, who manages the daily queue.

This is NOT a creative branding role. We do NOT want original logo designs from scratch. We want a technical artist who excels at adapting and simplifying existing artwork to meet strict manufacturing constraints. If you enjoy subtractive problem-solving, path hygiene, and making messy files perfectly clean for print and embroidery, this is the perfect stable, long-term job for you.

What You’ll Do (Daily Workflow):

Vector Hygiene: Receive "messy" auto-generated SVGs from our dashboard and clean them up (remove background artifacts, repair jagged edges, restore missing outlines).

Node Reduction: Simplify paths to the absolute minimum number of anchor points required without losing visual accuracy to the original file.

Vector Simplification (Embroidery Prep): You will need strong visual judgment to take complex, highly detailed logos and simplify them for embroidery. This means knowing how to merge complex gradients into flat colors, thicken thin lines, and delete tiny elements without losing the original identity and soul of the customer's logo. This is subtractive production work, not original concept design.

Color Correction: Ensure colors perfectly match the original customer-submitted reference image and snap to our approved 16-color thread palette when required.

System Integrity: Follow strict layer-naming conventions, export rules, and upload final production-ready files back to our custom dashboard.

Requirements & Hard Skills:

Adobe Illustrator Expert: You must know the Pen Tool, Pathfinder, and Outline Mode (Ctrl+Y / Cmd+Y) perfectly.

Technical Mindset: Previous experience in Prepress, Desktop Publishing (DTP), Vector Tracing, or Embroidery Digitization is highly preferred.

Process-Oriented: You must be comfortable following a strict standard operating procedure (SOP) and taking direct feedback from an Operations Lead without taking it personally. Our Operations lead will also be based in the Phillipines.

Infrastructure: You MUST have a high-speed, reliable internet connection AND a documented power backup solution (UPS, portable power station, or generator) to ensure work continues during local brownouts.

Soft Skills:

Highly Detail-Oriented: You notice a single stray pixel, an unjoined path, or a color mismatch instantly.

Fast but Careful: You thrive in a queue-based environment where volume matters, but you balance accuracy with speed.

Reliable Communicator: Strong written English to communicate clearly with the Operations Lead.

How to Apply:
Please begin your application message with the words: "Clean Paths" so we know you read this entire post. Applications without this will be immediately archived.

Please provide:

A brief introduction highlighting your experience with Prepress, DTP, vector simplification, or high-volume technical production work.

A link to your portfolio OR screenshots of your past vector cleanup work shown specifically in "Outline Mode" so we can evaluate your path structure.

Confirmation of your current internet speeds and your specific power backup solution.

Short answers to these two questions:

A. If a logo file has 2,000 anchor points but looks "fine" visually on the screen, why do you still need to clean and reduce the nodes for production?

B. Are you comfortable in a long-term role where your primary focus is technical cleanup and the subtractive simplification of existing artwork, rather than creating original concepts from scratch?