Lead Environment Artist - Real-Time Game Worlds

Socket.dev; Blank (MD); On-site; USD 141,000 - 294,000; Full time

Job summary

Epic Games is seeking a Principal Environment Artist to shape Fortnite’s worlds through hands-on production, artistic leadership, and technical problem-solving. You will create benchmark-quality assets, establish standards, and develop scalable workflows while guiding other artists and coordinating with Art Direction, Engineering, and Production.

You will mentor teammates, push visual quality, and align environment art with gameplay, performance, and memory constraints across platforms.

Qualifications

• Real-time 3D environments for commercially released games.
• Production-ready environment assets, materials, modular kits, and scenes.
• Unreal Engine experience for world-building, lighting, and optimization.
• Experience optimizing real-time environment content for performance and memory usage.
• Proficient in Maya/3ds Max/Blender and Substance Painter/Designer; Photoshop proficiency.
• Experience developing environment art workflows, pipelines, and quality standards.
• Ability to mentor environment artists and provide technical/creative feedback.

Responsibilities

• Create benchmark-quality environment assets, materials, modular kits, and scenes for Fortnite.
• Maintain environment art standards across composition, lighting, color, atmosphere, and storytelling.
• Improve scalable workflows to boost visual quality and production efficiency.
• Collaborate with Technical Art and Engineering on pipelines and documentation.
• Solve complex artistic and technical problems balancing quality and performance.
• Mentor artists with technical guidance and workflow support.
• Evaluate new tools/techniques to advance the environment team.

Skills

Unreal Engine

Environment art

Mentoring artists

PBR materials

Asset optimization

3D modeling

Education

Bachelor's degree in related field

10+ years real-time environment experience

Tools

Maya

3ds Max

Blender

Substance Painter/Designer

Photoshop

Job description

Epic Games is seeking a Principal Environment Artist to shape Fortnite’s worlds through hands-on production, artistic leadership, and technical problem-solving. You will create benchmark-quality assets, establish standards, and develop scalable workflows while guiding other artists and coordinating with Art Direction, Engineering, and Production.

You will mentor teammates, push visual quality, and align environment art with gameplay, performance, and memory constraints across platforms.