Principal Environment Artist

Epic Games; Cary (NC); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision

401k match

Mental health program

Unlimited PTO

Sabbatical after 7 years

Job summary

Epic Games is seeking a Principal Environment Artist to elevate Fortnite's worlds through hands-on production, artistic leadership, and technical problem solving.

You will create benchmark-quality assets, establish visual standards, and mentor artists while collaborating with Art Direction, Engineering, Design, and Production to balance visual quality with performance and memory constraints.

Qualifications

• 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 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 feedback.
• Experience 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.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Skills

Environment art

Art direction collaboration

Mentoring

Performance optimization

Memory management

Multidisciplinary teamwork

Communication

Portfolio demonstration

Education

Bachelor's degree or 10 years experience

Tools

Unreal Engine

Maya

3ds Max

Blender

Substance Painter

Substance 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 feedback
• Experience 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, shaderworkflows, 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 differentperformance and memory constraints

EPIC JOB + EPIC BENEFITS = EPIC LIFE

Our intent is to cover all things that are medically necessary and improve the quality of life. We pay 100% of the premiums for both you and your dependents. Our coverage includes Medical, Dental, a Vision HRA, Long Term Disability, Life Insurance & a 401k with competitive match. We also offer a robust mental well‑being program through Modern Health, which provides free therapy and coaching for employees & dependents. Throughout the year we celebrate our employees with events and company‑wide paid breaks. We offer unlimited PTO and sick time and recognize individuals for 7 years of employment with a paid sabbatical.

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.

Note to Recruitment Agencies: Epic does not accept any unsolicited resumes or approaches from any unauthorized third party (including recruitment or placement agencies) (i.e., a third party with whom we do not have a negotiated and validly executed agreement). We will not pay any fees to any unauthorized third party. Further details on these matters can be found here.