Senior Technical Artist - ILM San Francisco (Project Hire)

Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Salary: $134,300–$171,800 per year, with potential bonus and/or long-term incentive units.

Company

Industrial Light & Magic is a visual effects and immersive entertainment studio working across film, television, virtual reality, augmented reality, and location-based experiences.

What you will do

• Conceive, prototype, and implement technically advanced visuals and procedural systems for real-time immersive experiences.
• Create shaders, lighting, particle effects, materials, atmospherics, post-processing, and other VFX while supporting asset look development.
• Partner with artists, designers, and engineers to define technical requirements and manage asset production workflows.
• Develop tools and rapid prototypes using Blueprints, Python, and other scripting or programming languages.
• Profile and optimize asset performance, identify and fix bugs, and improve workflows for materials, shaders, LODs, streaming, collisions, and interactions.
• Mentor Technical Artists and help standardize studio tools, pipelines, and production best practices.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in games, film, television, AR/VR, or related fields.
• Experience with Python, C++, C#, Java, VEX, or MEL, plus proficiency in linear algebra.
• Strong 3D art skills covering modeling, texturing, UV mapping, animation, shading, lighting, and particle effects for real-time workflows.
• Proficiency with Maya, Houdini, Blender, Substance Designer, Substance Painter, and/or Photoshop.
• Extensive Unreal Engine experience with Blueprints, material networks, real-time lighting and simulations, and post-processing.
• In-depth knowledge of real-time shaders, VR shader limitations, PBR pipelines, subsurface shaders, node-based materials, and performance profiling.

Nice to have

• Experience or interest in VR and AR, along with a passion for playing and making games.
• Visual effects production or pipeline experience.
• Interest and capacity to work with proprietary toolsets.

Culture & Benefits

• Work on immersive entertainment projects combining visual effects, sound, narrative, and real-time technology.
• Collaborate across content, art, design, and engineering disciplines.
• Medical, financial, and other benefits are available depending on the level and position offered.
• The compensation package may include a bonus and/or long-term incentive units.

Hiring process

• A portfolio or reel with a detailed breakdown of individual work in each section is required with the application.