Principal Environment Artist

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

WHAT MAKES US EPIC?

At the core of Epic's success are talented, passionate people. Epic prides itself on creating a collaborative, welcoming, and creative environment. Whether it's building award-winning games or crafting engine technology that enables others to make visually stunning interactive experiences, we're always innovating.

Being Epic means being a part of a team that continually strives to do right by our community and users. We're constantly innovating to raise the bar of engine and game development.

ART

What We Do

Push your artistic talent to the limit on a team of world-class environment, character and concept artists who strive to innovate and inspire.

What You'll Do

Epic Games is seeking a Principal Environment Artist to help define and elevate the visual quality of Fortnite's worlds. This role combines hands-on environment art production, artistic leadership, and technical problem-solving.

You will create benchmark-quality work, establish visual standards, develop scalable workflows, and solve complex artistic and technical challenges. Working closely with Art Direction, Technical Art, Design, Engineering, and Production, you will help align visual quality with gameplay, performance, memory, and production requirements while mentoring artists and advancing environment art practices across the project.

In this role, you will

• Create benchmark-quality environment assets, materials, modular kits, and complete scenes that establish the visual quality bar for Fortnite
• Establish and maintain environment art standards across composition, lighting, color, atmosphere, materials, visual storytelling, gameplay readability, and environmental polish
• Develop and improve scalable environment art workflows that increase visual quality, consistency, production efficiency, and content reuse across the project
• Partner with Technical Art and Engineering to develop content creation pipelines, and maintain environment art documentation, best practices, workflows, and quality standards
• Identify and resolve complex artistic and technical problems while balancing visual quality, runtime performance, memory usage, platform requirements, and production schedules
• Mentor artists across different experience levels by providing technical guidance, artistic critique, workflow support, and professional development
• Evaluate emerging tools, technologies, and production techniques and recommend improvements that meaningfully advance the environment art team’s capabilities

What we're looking for

• Bachelor’s degree or at least 10 years of progressive professional experience creating real-time 3D environments for commercially released video games
• Professional experience creating production-ready environment assets, materials, modular kits, and complete real-time scenes
• Preferably professional experience using Unreal Engine for environment world-building, PBR materials, lighting, content implementation, and optimization
• Professional experience optimizing real-time environment content for performance, memory usage, visual quality, and multiple hardware platforms
• Professional experience using a 3D content creation application such as Maya, 3ds Max, or Blender; texture-authoring software such as Substance Painter or Substance Designer; and image-editing software such as Photoshop or equivalent professional tools
• Experience developing or improving environment art workflows, pipelines, documentation, or quality standards
• Experience reviewing the work of other artists and providing actionable artistic and technical feedbackExperience mentoring or providing professional guidance to environment artists
• Portfolio demonstrating professional environment artwork, including examples of 3D modeling, materials, composition, lighting, world-building, and completed real-time environments
• Strong written and verbal communication skills and demonstrated experience collaborating with multidisciplinary development teams

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing large-scale worlds for a AAA, multiplayer, or continuously updated game
• Experience with procedural environment creation, advanced material systems, shader workflows, terrain systems, or environment art tools
• Experience establishing visual benchmarks and discipline-wide quality standards
• Experience collaborating with external development partners or reviewing externally produced environment artwork
• Experience delivering environment content across multiple platforms with different performance and memory constraints

This role is open to multiple locations across the US (including CA, NYC, & WA).

Pay Transparency Information

The expected annual base pay range(s) for this position are detailed below. Each base pay range is relevant only for individuals who are residents of or will be expected to work within the specified locale. Compensation varies based on a variety of factors, which include (but aren't limited to) things such as skills and competencies, qualifications, knowledge, and experience. In addition to base pay, most employees are eligible to participate in Epic's generous benefit plans and discretionary incentive programs (subject to the terms of those plans or programs).

New York City Base Pay Range

$176,262 - $293,770 USD

California Base Pay Range

$155,111 - $258,518 USD

Washington Base Pay Range

$141,010 - $235,016 USD

ABOUT US

Epic Games is a leading interactive entertainment company. For over 30 years we've been making award-winning games and engine technology that empowers others to make visually stunning games and 3D content that bring environments to life like never before. Epic's award-winning Unreal Engine technology not only provides game developers the ability to build high-fidelity, interactive experiences for PC, console, mobile, and VR, it is also a tool being embraced by content creators across a variety of industries such as media and entertainment, automotive, and architectural design. As we continue to build our Engine technology and develop remarkable games, we strive to build teams of world-class talent.

Like what you hear? Come be a part of something Epic!

Epic Games deeply values diverse teams and an inclusive work culture, and we are proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. Learn more about our Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Policy here.