Technical Artist - Optimizing AA UE5 Game for Cloud Streaming

Lever, Inc.; Spain (TX); On-site; EUR 73,000 - 106,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

4-month contract

Remote in Europe

Overlap hours collaboration

Unreal project team

Job summary

Lever, Inc. is seeking a Technical Artist to optimize an AA Unreal Engine 5 game for cloud streaming from Spain-based projects. You will profile GPU/memory, tune Lumen, Nanite, and VSM, and build tools to enforce budgets while preserving a stylized look.

You will collaborate with Unreal engineers, UX designers, QA, and production to ensure measurable performance gains and robust content pipelines for a distributed, international team.

Qualifications

• Minimum 4 years as a Technical Artist in game development.
• At least 3 years with Unreal Engine 4/5 in production.
• Proven profiling and optimization experience in production environments.
• Strong understanding of materials, textures, lighting, and real-time rendering workflows.
• Hands-on with Lumen, Nanite, and Virtual Shadow Maps.
• Experience building editor tools or validation tooling.
• Ability to explain trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.
• Excellent written and spoken English.

Responsibilities

• Profile GPU performance and memory usage with profiling tools.
• Prioritize optimization work based on measurable gains without visual degradation.
• Identify bottlenecks and provide data to engineering teams.
• Optimize shaders, materials, overdraw, and texture memory.
• Tune Lumen, Nanite, and Virtual Shadow Maps for target budgets.
• Create and refine LODs and simplify materials as needed.
• Maintain visual identity while optimizing for cloud streaming.
• Evaluate how visuals respond to streaming and encoding.
• Define content budgets and collaborate on scalability targets.
• Build editor tools, validation scripts, and checks for budgets.
• Flag risks and communicate trade-offs to stakeholders.
• Collaborate with Unreal engineers, UX, QA, and production.
• Keep optimization decisions focused on measured trade-offs.

Skills

Unreal Engine

GPU profiling

Shader optimization

Lumen/Nanite

English comms

Tools

Unreal Insights

RenderDoc

Perforce

Job description

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Technical Artist - Optimizing AA UE5 Game for Cloud Streaming based in Spain.

The Technical Artist will help optimize a high-quality, content-rich Unreal Engine 5 game for deployment on a cloud streaming platform.
You will balance GPU performance, memory usage, platform constraints, and visual quality while preserving a distinctive stylized, non-photorealistic art direction.
The role combines hands-on profiling and content optimization with the development of tools and validation processes that support efficient production.
You will work across materials, textures, LODs, lighting, VFX, shaders, and advanced UE5 rendering technologies such as Lumen, Nanite, and Virtual Shadow Maps.
Visual quality and readability will remain a priority, with optimization decisions driven by measured performance gains rather than blanket reductions.
You will collaborate closely with technical artists, Unreal engineers, UX designers, QA, and production teams in a highly specialized environment.
This is a remote, project-based contract of approximately four months, offering the opportunity to solve challenging real-time rendering and cloud-streaming optimization problems.

Accountabilities

• Profile GPU performance and memory usage using Unreal Insights, RenderDoc, and other relevant profiling tools.

• Analyze profiling data to prioritize optimization work and verify that each change produces measurable performance improvements without unacceptable visual degradation.

• Identify bottlenecks that fall outside the art and content scope and provide engineering teams with relevant profiling data for further investigation.

• Optimize shaders, materials, overdraw, draw calls, texture memory, and other content-related sources of GPU and memory cost.

• Tune Lumen, Nanite, and Virtual Shadow Maps to achieve appropriate performance within target platform budgets.

• Create and refine LODs and simplify materials where global engine or scalability settings are insufficient.

• Preserve the intended visual identity throughout the optimization process, including outlines, shading, post-processing effects, lighting, atmosphere, and fog.

• Evaluate how line work, fine details, and other visual elements respond to cloud streaming and video encoding, and adjust content where necessary.

• Define appropriate content budgets and collaborate with engineering teams on scalability settings and performance targets.

• Build Unreal Engine editor tools, validation scripts, and checks that help identify content exceeding defined performance or memory budgets.

• Proactively identify visual and performance risks and communicate potential trade-offs to internal and external stakeholders.

• Collaborate with Unreal engineers, technical artists, UX designers, QA, and production to coordinate optimization priorities and deliverables.

• Keep optimization decisions focused on measured trade-offs, maintaining visual quality and readability rather than applying indiscriminate reductions.

Requirements

• At least 4 years of professional experience as a Technical Artist in game development, including work on large or complex projects.

• At least 3 years of hands-on production experience with Unreal Engine 4 or 5.

• Proven experience profiling and optimizing game content using GPU and memory profiling tools in production environments.

• Strong knowledge of materials, textures, LODs, lighting, VFX, animation, and real-time rendering workflows.

• Hands-on production experience with Lumen, Nanite, and Virtual Shadow Maps.

• Strong understanding of shader and material optimization, overdraw reduction, draw-call management, and texture memory optimization.

• Experience developing Unreal Engine editor tools, validation scripts, or similar production-support tooling.

• Experience using Perforce or a comparable version-control system.

• Ability to clearly explain technical, visual, and performance trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.

• Strong written and spoken English communication skills.

• Ability to work independently, prioritize optimization work using objective profiling data, and operate effectively within a multidisciplinary remote team.

• Experience optimizing stylized, non-photorealistic, or heavily post-processed visuals is advantageous.

• Understanding of how cloud streaming and video encoding can affect perceived visual quality is a plus.

• Experience porting or adapting games for lower-spec hardware is advantageous.

• Experience with Unreal Engine 5.5 or later is a plus.

• Experience working with outsourced development teams or external partners is desirable.

• Experience shipping at least one AAA or high-quality AA game is advantageous.

Benefits

• Approximately 4-month remote contract engagement.

• Remote working opportunity open to candidates in Europe, with working arrangements designed for collaboration across international time zones.

• Preferred working hours of 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM US Central Time; European candidates should provide at least four hours of overlap from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM US Central Time.

• Opportunity to work on a large, content-heavy, choice-driven narrative game built with Unreal Engine 5.

• Opportunity to solve complex GPU, memory, rendering, content optimization, and cloud-streaming challenges.

• Collaboration with experienced Unreal engineers, technical artists, UX designers, QA professionals, and production specialists.

• Exposure to advanced real-time rendering technologies, including Lumen, Nanite, and Virtual Shadow Maps.

• Opportunity to contribute to a distinctive stylized visual experience while working within demanding hardware and platform constraints.

• Professional and collaborative remote working environment.

• Opportunity to make a measurable impact on game performance and visual quality within a specialized technical art role.

We appreciate your interest and wish you the best!