Lead 3D Artist (Gamedev)

TL;DR

Lead 3D Artist (Gamedev): Leading character and environment art pods to produce AAA shipping quality assets for real-time games with an accent on PBR texturing/materials, LODs, and collision/lightmap creation. Focus on maintaining consistent output, managing asset pipelines in Unreal Engine, and serving as the primary art contact for the client.

Location: Fully Remote

Company

We partner with major AAA teams to ship real-time content.

What you will do

• Lead pods by assigning work, unblocking artists, and ensuring consistent cadence and quality across character and environment assets.
• Finish assets, including topology/UV cleanup, baking, PBR texturing/materials, LODs, and collisions/lightmaps.
• Conduct reviews, providing concise notes/paintovers, and driving assets through the Blockout → HP/LP → Bake → Texture → In-Engine → Final gates.
• Perform in-engine checks in Unreal to validate materials/master instancing, scale, LODs, and performance.
• Manage budgets and performance by adhering to tri/material/texture/memory targets and overseeing LOD strategy.
• Serve as the client interface to gather feedback, control scope, and proactively surface risks with proposed solutions.

Requirements

• 7+ years in real-time 3D art; 2+ years leading artists or pods.
• Shipped at least one AA/AAA project in a lead/key capacity.
• Proficient in Maya (or Blender/Max), ZBrush, Substance 3D; solid PBR fundamentals.
• Confident in integrating and troubleshooting within Unreal Engine.
• Clear, direct communicator; reliable in a remote setup and across time zones.

Nice to have

• Depth in character finishing (deformation-aware topology/skin weighting literacy) or environment finishing (modularity, trim sheets, foliage).
• Tooling/scripting (Python/MEL/Blueprint utilities), SpeedTree, Houdini, Marmoset.
• Experience with ShotGrid/Jira and vendor/outsource workflows.