Lead Technical Artist
Lead a team of technical artists at Epic Games building visually compelling, performant game worlds for its Disney collaboration: profiling and optimizing content, developing world-building tools and workflows, and mentoring artists. Requires shipped-title technical art experience and scripting skills (Python, C#, or C++) in engines like Unreal.
- Compensation
- $195.9K–$344.7K / yr
- Location
- BLANK,BLANK,Multiple Locations
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Lead
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- Not specified
- Category
- Creative
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Experience shipping and supporting a live-service game
- Strong professional experience in technical art for games, including contributions to a shipped title or comparably complex production
- Experience leading or mentoring Technical Artists and coordinating technical work across disciplines
- Practical knowledge of real-time rendering, profiling, content optimization, and performance budgets
- Experience with world-building pipelines, procedural workflows, LOD systems, and content streaming
- Proficiency with Unreal Engine, Unity, or a proprietary game engine
- Scripting or programming experience for tool development, using languages such as Python, C#, or C++
- Familiarity with shader and material development, alongside tools such as Houdini, Maya, or Blender
- Strong problem-solving, communication, and prioritization skills, with an appreciation for artistic quality
Full description
WHAT MAKES US EPIC?
At the core of Epic’s success are talented, passionate people. Epic prides itself on creating a collaborative, welcoming, and creative environment. Whether it’s building award-winning games or crafting engine technology that enables others to make visually stunning interactive experiences, we’re always innovating.
Being Epic means being a part of a team that continually strives to do right by our community and users. We’re constantly innovating to raise the bar of engine and game development.
ART
What We Do
Push your artistic talent to the limit on a team of world-class environment, character and concept artists who strive to innovate and inspire.
What You'll Do
We're looking for a Lead Technical Artist to guide a team of Technical Artists in building visually compelling, performant game worlds as part of our collaboration with Disney. Working closely with Art, Engineering, and Design, you'll translate project goals into practical tools, workflows, and technical solutions. This is a hands-on leadership role focused on day-to-day execution, team mentorship, and solving production challenges. You'll help deliver the studio's technical art direction.
In this role, you will
- Profile game content and resolve performance bottlenecks in collaboration with Art and Engineering
- Optimize geometry, materials, shaders, textures, lighting, foliage, and VFX to meet established performance and memory budgets
- Help artists apply best practices for LODS, instancing, streaming, and content scalability across target platforms
- Conduct content reviews and develop validation tools to identify technical issues early
- Develop and maintain tools that support efficient environment creation, including terrain, foliage, procedural generation, and asset placement
- Partner with Environment Art and Level Design to improve world-building workflows and troubleshoot production issues
- Implement established standards for modular assets, materials, and content organization
- Document tools and workflows, helping artists adopt them effectively
- Lead the day-to-day work of a small Technical Art team, coordinating priorities and deliverables with Production and technical leadership
- Mentor Technical Artists through feedback, technical reviews, and hands-on problem-solving
- Balance individual contributions with delegation, giving team members clear ownership and opportunities to grow
- Communicate progress, dependencies, and technical risks to project leadership