Principal Technical Artist (Unreal Engine 5)

Location: Hybrid role based in Sheffield, United Kingdom; flexible working hours and patterns are available, with certain hybrid models.

Company

hirify.global is a Sheffield-based video game studio developing Undisputed, a boxing game built with proprietary technology and partnerships across the boxing industry.

What you will do

• Provide principal-level technical leadership for Unreal Engine 5 and resolve complex rendering, shader, material, visual fidelity, and performance issues.
• Develop and optimise rendering techniques, materials, shaders, visual systems, and performance budgets for target platforms.
• Design scalable technical art pipelines, tools, frameworks, automation, asset validation, and reusable technical art libraries.
• Support shader, rigging, animation, VFX, and runtime content integration while collaborating with Engineering on engine integrations and technical architecture.
• Define technical art standards, documentation, playbooks, exemplar assets, reviews, and postmortems across development teams.
• Mentor developers, share knowledge, and influence long-term technical art strategy while remaining hands-on.

Requirements

• Extensive professional Technical Art experience in the games industry, including significant Senior, Lead, or Principal-level experience.
• Expert hands-on Unreal Engine 5 experience covering rendering systems, materials, shaders, asset integration, and performance optimisation.
• Proven ability to independently diagnose and resolve complex rendering, visual quality, and technical performance challenges in production.
• Advanced understanding of real-time rendering, GPU/CPU profiling, shader optimisation, lighting, graphics performance, content optimisation, memory management, asset budgets, and platform constraints.
• Experience with Unreal Insights, GPU Visualizer, RenderDoc, Unreal Engine Blueprint, Python, and technical art scripting, plus a working understanding of C++.
• Experience designing scalable technical art pipelines, tools, frameworks, and automated workflows.
• Experience collaborating with Rendering Engineers, Artists, and Technical Directors, and establishing standards adopted by multiple development teams.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, communication, mentoring, documentation, and knowledge-sharing skills.

Nice to have

• Experience optimising games for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
• Experience with Unreal Engine source code, custom rendering features, or engine-level modifications.
• Advanced knowledge of Nanite, Lumen, Niagara, Control Rig, and procedural content generation.
• Experience with high-fidelity character rendering, skin, hair, cloth, and deformation systems.
• Experience with Maya, Houdini, or Blender and pipeline integration or automation.
• Experience developing automated asset validation, profiling, or technical art quality assurance systems.
• Experience collaborating with Epic Games, middleware providers, or external technical partners.
• Experience contributing to technical architecture and shared services across multiple projects or development teams.

Culture & Benefits

• Welcoming, diverse studio culture with open communication, shared learning, and a voice for everyone.
• 23 days of annual leave plus bank holidays, increasing to 30 days, Christmas shutdown, and the option to buy or sell up to 5 holiday days.
• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay, private healthcare with optical and dental cover, company sick pay, wellbeing days, 24/7 doctors, and an Employee Assistance Programme.
• Learning days, technology salary-sacrifice support up to £750, relocation benefits subject to eligibility, life cover of three times annual salary, and a discretionary bonus.
• Sheffield and Leamington studios offer free refreshments; Sheffield provides free parking, team events, wrap parties, and an individual entertainment budget.