Lead Technical Artist — Real-Time Graphics & Tooling

Placements24; South Africa; Remote; ZAR 900,000 - 1,300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Health insurance

Generous leave

Career advancement

Team events

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking a Lead Technical Artist for a Polokwane-based studio, bridging art and engineering to deliver stunning visuals in next-generation projects. You will build pipelines, tools, and workflows for Unreal Engine or Unity, mentor the art team, and collaborate with programmers to push real-time graphics.

The role requires 7+ years in technical art, leadership experience, strong shader and lighting expertise, and a portfolio of pipeline development.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in technical art for games, with 3+ years in lead/supervisory roles.
• Expertise in Unreal Engine or Unity and shader/material authoring.
• Strong scripting capability in Python, MEL, or C#.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a team of technical artists and foster collaboration.
• Develop, maintain, and optimize art pipelines and workflows.
• Collaborate with engineers to implement graphics features and shaders.
• Optimize assets for multi-platform performance and visual quality.
• Create documentation for pipelines, tools, and best practices.
• Troubleshoot technical art issues and research new techniques.

Skills

Leadership

Mentoring

Pipeline development

Shader development

PBR workflows

Unreal Engine

Unity

Python scripting

C# scripting

Problem solving

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Graphics

Game Development degree or related field

Tools

Unreal Engine

Unity

MEL

Python

C#

Job description

Placements24 is seeking a Lead Technical Artist for a Polokwane-based studio, bridging art and engineering to deliver stunning visuals in next-generation projects. You will build pipelines, tools, and workflows for Unreal Engine or Unity, mentor the art team, and collaborate with programmers to push real-time graphics.

The role requires 7+ years in technical art, leadership experience, strong shader and lighting expertise, and a portfolio of pipeline development.