Lead Technical Artist

Founded by Bad Robot (Lost, Cloverfield, Westworld, Star Wars, Star Trek), we at Bad Robot Games are on a mission to continually reinvent how stories are played.

We are a remote-first games company represented by a diverse team, which empowers us to make the kinds of games in which all players can see themselves. Working closely with our colleagues at Bad Robot Productions, our projects unite our extensive network of games, TV, and film industry talent to create original IPs, expansive worlds and tell new stories across all media platforms which are as fun to watch as they are to play.

Bad Robot Games is looking for a highly skilled and experienced Lead Technical Artist to join the team on an unannounced title being developed within Unreal Engine. This role balances team leadership with hands-on development and includes a blend of team and schedule management, technical decision making, assessment of support needs, and individual contribution. 

As a Lead Technical Artist, you’ll partner closely with our Principal Technical Artist to shape the technical art direction for the project and guide implementation across multiple disciplines. You’ll act as a key liaison between art, engineering, design, and production, ensuring scalable, efficient workflows, tools, and systems are in place while supporting individual team members and triaging support requests.

While leadership, coordination, and support are the primary responsibilities of this role, there is also an expectation of technical expertise and hands-on contribution as capacity allows. Focus areas include material and shader development, performance profiling and optimization, and VFX and tooling support.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Team Leadership and Support
• Work with production to shape sprint plans and manage tech art priorities
• Serve as the first point of contact for tech art-related support and triage requests
• Provide mentorship, guidance, and technical review for other tech artists
• Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
• Interface regularly with art, engineering, and design to resolve pipeline and implementation challenges
• Help coordinate technical decision-making and maintain consistency across features
• Hands-On Technical Work
• Help maintain and improve scalable workflows across art and design pipelines
• Contribute to materials, tools, and performance profiling
• Collaborate with team on art creation processes to deliver high quality, performant results at scale

KEY QUALIFICATIONS

• Has shipped and/or worked in a professional setting with Unreal Engine (ideally Unreal 5+)
• Strong Unreal Engine 5 experience (including materials, blueprints, tooling, optimization)
• Experience mentoring other technical artists and has a strong understanding of best practices around leading and managing a team
• Ability to prioritize and triage support across a multidisciplinary team
• Able to operate in a hybrid (management/IC) role with both team support and individual contributions
• Experience in designing procedural systems and tools for content creation
• A great understanding of art asset optimization and how it affects gameplay performance
• A highly collaborative mindset and the ability adapt to the needs of a small team
• All of our roles require up to 10% air travel. Examples include Studio/Team Offsites, Team/Studio Events, etc.

BONUSES

• Complex shader creation outside of node based systems (i.e. HLSL)
• Extensive experience with Unreal Engine 5 features such as Nanite, PCG, Lumen, etc.
• Coding skills in Python or C++

Annual Salary Range: $170,000 - $175,000

Find out more about our benefits and team on our careers page!

Bad Robot Games recruiters will never ask you for money or to provide financial information during our recruiting process. Scammers often request money transfers for Visa processing fees or travel expenses, as well as personal information including passport info, social security numbers, credit card or bank account information.Bad Robot Games recruiters will never use personal email (including @gmail) accounts when contacting candidates. We also do NOT interview or screen candidates over messenger or text-based chat. All communication will be tied to badrobotgames.com

Bad Robot Games is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All persons will receive consideration for employment without regard to gender (including gender identity, gender expression and gender reassignment), race (including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin), religion or belief, marital or civil partnership status, disability, age, sexual orientation, pregnancy or maternity, trade union membership or membership in any other legally protected category.