Lead VFX Artist job at Hangar 13, Brighton

Festybay; Brighton; Hybrid; GBP 75,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive healthcare

Retirement matching

Competitive corporate benefits package

Job summary

Festybay is looking for a Lead VFX Artist to join their team in Brighton. This role involves driving both artistic and technical direction for real-time visual effects in AAA gaming titles using Unreal Engine 5. You will lead an internal team and collaborate with external partners, ensuring the delivery of high-quality effects that enhance gameplay and narrative.

The position requires at least 7 years of VFX experience and offers a hybrid work model, with a competitive salary range of £75,000 to £95,000 per annum based on experience.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 7+ years experience in real-time VFX.
• At least two shipped AAA titles in a Senior or Lead capacity.
• Expert-level knowledge of UE5, specifically Niagara.

Responsibilities

• Drive artistic and technical direction for real-time VFX.
• Oversee external vendor output to meet studio standards.
• Collaborate across disciplines to integrate VFX into games.

Skills

Unreal Engine 5 mastery

Artistic direction

Technical execution

Team leadership

Vendor management

Tools

Unreal Engine 5

Houdini

EmberGen

Job description

Corporate Profile & Studio Vision

The Lead VFX Artist is a high-profile leadership role at Hangar 13’s Brighton studio, driving the artistic and technical direction of real-time visual effects for major AAA gaming titles. Operating under a hybrid studio model (minimum 3 days on-site), you will manage a talented internal team and collaborate with external co-development partners to deliver visually spectacular, performant effects using Unreal Engine 5. Balancing creativity with technical optimization, you will partner across disciplines—including Design, Cinematics, and Engineering—to ensure VFX enhance gameplay, narrative immersion, and run seamlessly across current and next-gen hardware platforms.

Brighton Jobs Overview: Lead VFX Artist

Company: Hangar 13 (An internal 2K development studio) • Job Title: Lead VFX Artist • Department: Art • Job Type: Permanent, Full-Time • Work Model: Studio-Based Hybrid (Minimum 3 days per week on-site) • Location: Brighton, East Sussex, England, United Kingdom • Reports To: Art Director • Target Infrastructure: Cross-Platform AAA (PC, Current & Next-Gen Console Hardware) • Estimated Salary Range: £75,000 – £95,000 GBP / annum

Primary Toolsets: Unreal Engine 5 (Niagara, Lumen, Nanite), Houdini, EmberGen

Corporate Profile & Studio Vision

Hangar 13 is the elite global development studio behind some of the industry’s most immersive, narrative-driven AAA gaming experiences. Operating as an internal pillar of 2K Games, Hangar 13 functions as a unified global collective with studios across Brighton (UK), Brno, and Prague (CZ).

The studio’s philosophy is anchored on bringing complex, mature stories to life through rich world-building, state-of-the-art technological pipelines, and deep player immersion. By joining the Brighton studio, you will work alongside world-class developers in a diverse, welcoming, and creatively challenging environment that pushes the envelope of what interactive entertainment can achieve.

Comprehensive Position Summary

We are seeking a highly sophisticated and technically articulate Lead VFX Artist with profound expertise in Unreal Engine 5. In this pivotal leadership role, you will define both the artistic benchmarks and technical execution standards for real-time visual effects across our upcoming AAA slate. This position sits at the critical nexus of creativity and high-end software engineering. You will be responsible for translating the Art Director’s stylistic vision into high-fidelity, performant, real-time particle dynamics, environmental effects, and combat feedback. Execution requires not just a seasoned aesthetic eye, but a deep mathematical and programmatic mastery of UE5’s foundational systems, including Niagara, Lumen, Nanite, and advanced material/shader authoring. You will oversee, review, and align the output of external co-development partners and global outsourcing vendors, ensuring their work matches the studio’s technical constraints and creative standards.

Core Duties & Operational Responsibilities

The responsibilities of the Lead VFX Artist are distributed across three distinct focus areas: Artistic & Technical Execution, Team Leadership & Vendor Management, and Cross-Discipline Pipeline Collaboration.

[Design & Mechanics] ➔ [Animation/Cinematics] ➔ [Your Team: UE5 Niagara Systems] ➔ [Target Platforms (Console/PC)]

1. Artistic & Technical Execution

• Push Visual Boundaries: Leverage UE5’s native toolsets (Niagara fluid simulation, advanced vertex shaders, grid-based simulations) to establish a new gold standard for high-fidelity real-time visual effects.
• Optimize Performance: Establish, monitor, and aggressively maintain strict performance and memory budgets for VFX assets across all target SKUs (PC, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and next-gen systems). Ensure clean execution within frame-time constraints.
• Lighting Integration: Calibrate real-time effects to interact seamlessly with dynamic global illumination models, balancing emissive materials against Lumen settings.

2. Team Leadership & External Management

• Mentorship & Culture: Provide direct leadership, technical guidance, and constructive, frame-by-frame critique to a local and distributed team of VFX artists, fostering their career growth and artistic evolution.
• Workflow Standardization: Design, document, and deploy efficient VFX creation pipelines that scale predictably across large production environments.
• Co-Development & Outsourcing Oversight: Act as the primary gatekeeper for external co-development pipelines. Review external vendor deliveries, provide clear paint-overs or technical feedback, and ensure external integrations are structurally sound within our primary branch.

3. Cross-Discipline Pipeline Integration

• Gameplay Readability: Partner closely with Game Design teams to verify that combat, environmental, and interactive VFX heighten player feedback, visual clarity, and immersion without causing visual noise or gameplay obstruction.
• Cinematic Integration: Collaborate with the Cinematics, Animation, and Lighting teams via Unreal Sequencer to compose narrative-driven, frame-accurate VFX for scripted cutscenes and emotional story arcs.
• Tool Development: Team up with Technical Art and Engine Engineering groups to build custom tools, HLSL shaders, and pipeline scripts to continually expand the capabilities of UE5’s native VFX toolset.

Detailed Professional Requirements

Essential Skills & Background

• Industry Tenure: Minimum of 7+ years working professionally as a real-time VFX artist within the interactive entertainment industry.
• Shipped Credits: At least two (2) successfully shipped AAA titles on major console or PC platforms in a Senior or Lead capacity.
• Unreal Engine 5 Mastery: Expert-level knowledge of the architecture of UE5, specifically Niagara, custom shader/material creation, math-based vertex deformers, and GPU/CPU profiling tools (e.g., Unreal Insights, RenderDoc, PIX).
• Portfolio Standards: A highly polished, professional demo reel demonstrating exceptional craftsmanship in real-time fluid dynamics, explosions, environmental atmospherics, and combat feedback loops.
• Leadership Capability: Demonstrated history of managing, scheduling, mentoring, and leading teams of artists through a full production cycle.

Highly Desirable Qualifications

• Procedural Pipelines: Practical experience integrating offline or real-time simulation software such as Houdini or EmberGen directly into an Unreal Engine production pipeline.
• Cinematic Sequence Tools: Comprehensive familiarity with sequencing pre-rendered and real-time effects using Unreal Sequencer.
• External Production: Direct experience handling external vendors, framing out outsourcing briefs, and assessing external milestones.
• Networked Game Design: An understanding of the unique architectural hurdles associated with synchronous multiplayer games, including latency compensation, replication budgets, and bandwidth constraints for networked VFX.

Equal Opportunity & Accessibility

Hangar 13 and 2K believe a diverse team produces richer worlds. We remain fiercely committed to providing equal employment opportunities across all areas of our studio. We welcome qualified individuals with disabilities and are dedicated to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process, technical test phases, and long-term employment. If you require specific adjustments to participate, please state this to your talent acquisition representative.

Note on Application Process

Content related to the application process has been omitted to focus on the job description and requirements.