Principal Materials Artist for Apex Legends

Respawn Entertainment; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 153,700 - 233,600; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid time off

Sick time

11 company holidays?

Parental leave

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Life insurance

Disability insurance

401(k)

Bonus and equity potential

Job summary

Respawn Entertainment in Los Angeles is seeking a Principal Material Artist to lead the development of next‑generation surface materials and pipelines for AAA games.

You will collaborate with rendering, technical art, and craft teams to design, build, curate, and optimize a shared material library, advance PBR workflows, and ensure performance across platforms. This senior role offers broad agency to shape tooling, pipelines, and assets with high fidelity impact.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of professional game development experience.
• Portfolio demonstrating a wide range of high quality materials and a mastery of PBR.
• Expert level knowledge of Substance Painter and Designer.
• Direct production experience building shared material libraries at AAA scale.
• Experience in live service titles, seasonal content, cosmetics, or character customization is a plus.
• Experience collaborating with technical disciplines on standing up new pipelines.
• Capability to author materials or shaders as proof of concept or visual targets is a plus.
• Comfortable with proprietary technology across platforms with performance priority.
• Strong written and verbal communication; ability to create documentation, training materials, or mentoring junior artists.

Responsibilities

• Co‑develop new surfacing strategies and pipelines in collaboration with rendering, technical art, and craft experts.
• Build, curate, and maintain a high quality shared material library.
• Help design material systems or layered materials with an understanding of complex surface interactions.
• Contribute to tools and pipelines leveraging SME in Substance Painter/Designer, Houdini Copernicus, or other related DCC tools.
• Be a champion for technology that meets high performance expectations and technical constraints.
• Help test and validate new rendering and lighting features.
• Build partnerships and collaborative efforts between multiple disciplines to achieve successful solutions.

Skills

PBR mastery

Shader authoring

Team collaboration

Live service experience

Documentation & mentoring

Tools

Substance Painter

Substance Designer

Houdini Copernicus

Job description

Respawn Entertainment in Los Angeles is seeking a Principal Material Artist to lead the development of next‑generation surface materials and pipelines for AAA games.

You will collaborate with rendering, technical art, and craft teams to design, build, curate, and optimize a shared material library, advance PBR workflows, and ensure performance across platforms. This senior role offers broad agency to shape tooling, pipelines, and assets with high fidelity impact.