Lead Environment Artist 12 Month FTC - Studio Elevation (Remote within the UK)
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We are looking for a talented Lead Environment Artist to lead the creation of high-quality, visually compelling game environments while ensuring alignment with the project’s artistic vision and technical requirements. This role involves setting quality standards, mentoring junior and mid-level artists, and driving innovative techniques to optimise the creation process.
As a Lead Environment Artist, you will be a key contributor to the game’s world-building efforts, balancing artistic creativity with technical excellence to deliver immersive and engaging game worlds.
The rundown:
- 12 month fixed term contract
- Full time (37.5 hours per week)
- Fully remote within the UK
- Salary is competitive and dependent on experience
Key responsibilities:
- Provide expert execution, reviewing and guidance in the creation of complex, high-quality 3D assets, including buildings, landscapes, props, and other environmental elements, ensuring visual consistency across the project.
- Define the structure and maintenance of modular kits and reusable assets for efficient production pipelines.
- Oversee the assembly and composition of large-scale game levels, ensuring they are visually compelling, gameplay-friendly, and optimised for performance.
- Develop advanced materials and textures using state-of-the-art PBR workflows in tools like Substance Painter, Designer, and Photoshop.
- Ensure material libraries are consistent and scalable for team-wide use.
- Guide the team in implementing assets into game engines (e.g., Unreal Engine) with a focus on technical efficiency and artistic quality.
- Troubleshoot and resolve complex technical challenges, such as performance bottlenecks, shader optimisation, and memory constraints.
- Establish and review best practices for world structure, implementation and final execution.
- Set the environment team up for success in delivering state of the art game art.
- Take responsibility for a large section of world creation and guide world teams through out the development process.
- Mentor and support environment artists, providing constructive feedback, training, and career development opportunities.
- Foster a collaborative and inclusive team environment, encouraging knowledge-sharing and innovation.
- Define environment road maps, contribute to planning meetings, offering insights on scope, resource allocation, and project timelines.
- Advocate for the artistic vision while balancing technical and production constraints.
- Document workflows, tools, and techniques to improve team efficiency and ensure consistency across the project.
- Collaborate with technical artists to refine and develop new tools, shaders, and workflows that enhance the art pipeline.
Requirements
The skills you’ll need:
- A strong portfolio demonstrating leadership in creating high-quality environments and technical innovation.
- Mastery of industry-standard 3D modelling tools such as Maya, Blender.
- Advanced texturing and material creation using Substance Suite, Photoshop, or equivalent.
- Expert-level understanding of PBR workflows and shader development.
- Proficiency in game engines (e.g., Unreal Engine) for asset implementation, level setup, and technical troubleshooting.
- Deep knowledge of optimisation techniques, including LODs, culling, texture streaming, and draw call management.
- Exceptional understanding of composition, lighting, scale, and storytelling in environment design.
- Expertise in modular design principles and advanced world-building techniques.
- 4-6 years of professional experience in environment art, with multiple shipped titles.
The nice to haves:
- Proficiency in sculpting software like ZBrush for detailed modeling.
- Experience in VR
Benefits
We are nDreams – we develop and publish the world’s most immersive VR games. You may know us as the developer behind Synapse, Phantom: Covert Ops, Fracked, and Frenzies. As a publisher, we have also supported the release of other studio’s titles including Little Cities, PowerWash Simulator VR, and Vendetta Forever. With humble beginnings as an independent studio, we combine amazing projects with a personal, caring touch. We’ve got more incredible titles to be announced soon!
We believe the best workplaces and games are created by diverse, happy and safe teams. We're committed to building a culture centred on respect, wellbeing and balance. It's crucial we make our games and industry more accessible to underrepresented communities. We strive to live this through the people we hire, the experiences we create and the causes we support.
We want everyone to have the opportunity to bring their best, authentic self to work. Please let us know if you require reasonable adjustments during the interview process by emailing interviewing@ndreams.com or speaking to your nDreams recruiter. For more information about reasonable adjustments, check out this guidance from Scope.
We offer great perks, including flexible hours, duvets days, your birthday off, dedicated personal development time and support, as well as regular socials. Beyond this, there’s an excellent holiday offering, pension scheme, health insurance, life cover and much more.