About This Role
This role is for an Unreal Engine Technical Artist with more than seven years of experience to enhance the visual and technical quality of high-end, real-time VR experiences. The position bridges the gap between art and technology, ensuring visual elements achieve high realism while performing efficiently in real-time environments. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in Unreal Engine 5, including materials, lighting, geometry systems, VFX, UI, and optimization.
Responsibilities
- Act as the technical authority for Unreal Engine across the visualization team
- Bridge the gap between artists and technical requirements, ensuring visual quality meets real-time performance targets
- Establish best practices for asset creation, scene setup, and Unreal workflows
- Design, build, and optimize complex Unreal materials and shaders using the material editor
- Ensure accurate PBR workflows and consistent material behavior across projects
- Develop reusable material systems and libraries for scalability
- Optimize material performance while maintaining visual fidelity
- Own and refine lighting workflows using Unreal Engine Lumen for dynamic global illumination
- Balance visual realism versus performance, especially for VR applications
- Develop lighting presets and standards for consistent, high-end visual results
- Leverage Nanite to manage high-quality geometry efficiently while maintaining performance
- Define strategies for mesh optimization, LOD workflows (when needed), and asset scalability
- Collaborate with artists to ensure assets are built correctly for Unreal ingestion
- Develop and optimize Niagara-based VFX systems
- Support rigid body simulations, physics interactions, and animation systems within Unreal
- Ensure all effects and simulations are performing and stable in VR environments
- Build and refine UMG-based UI systems, including operator-driven interfaces
- Support development of external control systems (e.g., tablet/iPad control panels driving VR experiences)
- Ensure UI logic is clean, modular, and scalable
- Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks related to materials, lighting, geometry, VFX, memory, and draw calls
- Use Unreal profiling tools to maintain real-time performance standards
- Ensure all experiences meet high-fidelity VR performance targets
- Improve and maintain 3D pipeline workflows from 3ds Max into Unreal Engine
- Establish asset standards (naming, scale, pivots, materials, polycount, etc.)
- Build tools, guidelines, and documentation to improve team efficiency
- Mentor artists transitioning into Unreal workflows
