Principal Environment Artist
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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, 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 .
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 .