Principal Material Artist - Hard Surface (Unreal Engine)

Location: Royal Leamington Spa, United Kingdom; hybrid working environment

Company

hirify.global is a new AAA game studio building a best-in-class game and a new intellectual property.

What you will do

• Define and champion the material quality bar for the Vehicle Art team.
• Design, develop, optimise and maintain complex Unreal Master Material Shaders and scalable material systems.
• Create benchmark-quality PBR textures and Material Instances for metals, paints, plastics, composites, rubber, glass and interior finishes.
• Establish and document material pipelines, workflows, automation opportunities and standardisation practices.
• Collaborate with Art Leadership, Vehicle Artists, Technical Artists and Render Engineers to solve rendering challenges and meet performance targets.
• Research real-world vehicles, manufacturing processes and material properties while sharing knowledge and mentoring other artists.

Requirements

• Extensive senior- or principal-level experience creating, implementing, optimising and maintaining photorealistic PBR materials and shaders in Unreal Engine.
• Expertise in hard-surface material creation with a strong portfolio of realistic materials for vehicles, machinery, products or comparable assets.
• Ability to analyse real-world reference, material construction, manufacturing processes, surface response, wear and variation.
• Advanced proficiency with Substance Painter, Substance Designer, 3ds Max, Maya, Blender, RealityCapture or equivalent tools and pipelines.
• Deep understanding of real-time rendering, lighting, PBR workflows, shader development and performance optimisation.
• Experience influencing quality across a team, communicating specialist knowledge and providing guidance, mentorship and direction.

Nice to have

• Experience creating materials for vehicles, automotive visualisation or other high-end hard-surface assets.
• Knowledge of photogrammetry, photography, scanning and physically accurate material capture techniques.
• Interest in vehicles, automotive design or motorsport.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative hybrid working environment.
• 25 days of holiday plus one day for your birthday.
• Studio shutdown between Christmas and New Year.
• Discretionary bonus scheme and private pension scheme.
• Private healthcare, dental care, optical treatments and health and well-being benefits.
• Mental health support.