We are seeking a Principal Environment Artist to help define and elevate the quality, efficiency, and consistency of environment-art production across GameSim projects.

This is a high level senior individual-contributor position for an experienced artist who can operate at both the strategic and hands-on levels. You will create benchmark-quality work, establish practical production standards, solve complex artistic and technical problems, and provide direction to environment teams working across different projects, engines, styles, and partner studios.

You will work closely with Art Directors, project leads, Technical Art, Production, Design, Engineering, clients, and partner studios to translate creative goals into clear and achievable environment-art strategies.

This role requires strong leadership, sound judgment, clear communication, and the ability to influence teams through expertise, example, and collaboration.

What Success Looks Like

Within your first 90 days, you will:

• Develop a strong understanding of GameSim's projects, clients, production structure, and environment-art capabilities.
• Build trust with artists, project leadership, clients, and partner studios through clear communication and reliable decision-making.
• Create or guide the development of benchmark work that establishes a clear visual and technical quality bar.
• Identify a meaningful artistic, technical, or workflow challenge and help implement a practical improvement.
• Provide feedback and mentorship that improves the quality, consistency, and effectiveness of the environment team.

Responsibilities
Artistic Leadership and Execution

• Create high-quality real-time environments, architecture, modular kits, hero assets, materials, terrain, foliage, and world-building content.
• Produce benchmark assets and scenes that communicate expectations for composition, scale, visual hierarchy, material quality, environmental storytelling, and final polish.
• Translate art direction, concept art, reference material, design requirements, and client feedback into clear production goals.
• Establish environment-art strategies for modular construction, asset reuse, trim sheets, material systems, terrain, foliage, set dressing, and world building.
• Maintain a strong hands-on contribution when establishing quality bars, validating workflows, solving difficult problems, or supporting critical deliverables.
• Evaluate environment artwork objectively and provide specific, actionable feedback through reviews, paintovers, blockouts, reference boards, documentation, or in-engine examples.

Production and Pipeline Development

• Partner with Art Direction, Production, and Technical Art to define environment workflows that balance visual quality, scope, schedule, and technical requirements.
• Identify artistic, technical, and production risks early and recommend practical solutions.
• Help teams break down broad or incomplete direction into understandable tasks, milestones, priorities, and acceptance criteria.
• Improve environment-art pipelines through reusable workflows, templates, documentation, example assets, and production standards.
• Support planning and estimation by evaluating asset complexity, dependencies, staffing needs, and production risks.
• Troubleshoot challenging issues related to asset construction, materials, world building, optimization, engine implementation, or content integration.
• Help ensure environments meet project requirements for performance, memory, streaming, draw calls, shader complexity, collision, LODs, and platform limitations.

Team and Project Influence

• Guide environment artists across internal teams, partner studios, and external development groups.
• Mentor senior artists and emerging leads in artistic judgment, communication, planning, review practices, and decision-making.
• Collaborate with Art Directors to maintain a consistent visual direction across teams and deliverables.
• Participate in client meetings, milestone reviews, art reviews, and project-planning discussions when senior environment-art representation is needed.
• Communicate risks, tradeoffs, priorities, and recommendations clearly to artistic and non-artistic stakeholders.
• Help align teams working across different studios, disciplines, cultures, and time zones.
• Support prototypes, art tests, project pitches, preproduction efforts, and early pipeline development.
• Contribute to the continued growth of GameSim's environment-art discipline through mentorship, hiring support, portfolio reviews, documentation, and capability planning.

Requirements

• Extensive professional experience in game development, real-time production, or a closely related field.
• Multiple shipped games or comparable professional real-time projects.
• A portfolio demonstrating exceptional environment-art quality and strong production judgment.
• Expert understanding of composition, scale, proportion, visual hierarchy, shape language, material definition, lighting response, environmental storytelling, and scene cohesion.
• Advanced experience creating modular environments, architecture, props, terrain, materials, and reusable asset systems.
• Strong understanding of modeling, UVs, baking, texel density, trim sheets, tileable materials, decals, vertex blending, and real-time material workflows.
• Professional experience developing environments in Unreal Engine or another modern real-time engine.
• Strong understanding of environment optimization, including LODs, memory, streaming, draw calls, collision, shader complexity, and platform constraints.
• Experience establishing visual benchmarks, environment pipelines, asset standards, or production workflows.
• Demonstrated ability to solve complex artistic, technical, and production problems with limited supervision.
• Experience guiding senior artists, leads, distributed teams, external partners, or vendors.
• Ability to provide clear, constructive, and actionable artistic feedback.
• Strong understanding of how to balance quality, scope, schedule, technical requirements, and available resources.
• Strong written, verbal, presentation, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Experience collaborating with Art Direction, Production, Technical Art, Design, Engineering, Lighting, VFX, and other development disciplines.
• Ability to adapt to different projects, visual styles, engines, pipelines, and client expectations.
• Comfort participating in client-facing discussions and representing environment-art decisions professionally.

Tools and Technical Experience

Candidates should have advanced experience with a professional environment-art toolset. This may include:

• Maya, Blender, 3ds Max, or a comparable 3D content-creation package
• ZBrush or an equivalent sculpting application
• Substance 3D Painter and Substance 3D Designer
• Photoshop or comparable image-editing software
• Unreal Engine 5 or another modern real-time engine
• Perforce or another production source-control system
• Jira, Confluence, Miro, or comparable planning and documentation tools

Expertise with every listed application is not required. We are primarily interested in candidates who demonstrate strong fundamentals, adaptability, and the ability to choose appropriate tools for the production problem.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in co-development, outsourcing, consulting, or work-for-hire game production.
• Experience contributing to AAA PC or console titles.
• Experience working across both realistic and stylized visual pipelines.
• Experience supporting multiple projects or teams at a studio or discipline level.
• Experience owning a level, biome, world region, or major environment feature from early planning through final delivery.
• Experience with Unreal Engine systems such as World Partition, Nanite, virtual texturing, procedural content generation, landscape tools, material functions, Blueprints, or profiling tools.
• Houdini experience involving procedural modeling, terrain generation, scattering, modular construction, or artist-facing tools.
• Experience with foliage workflows, SpeedTree, photogrammetry, procedural generation, or organic-environment production.
• Experience with lighting and post-processing sufficient to establish visual targets and diagnose presentation issues.
• Familiarity with Python, editor scripting, automation, or technical-art tool development.
• Experience contributing to project scoping, staffing recommendations, bidding, hiring, or portfolio evaluation.

Portfolio requirements

Your portfolio must demonstrate:

• High-quality real-time environments with strong composition, scale, material definition, environmental storytelling, and scene cohesion.
• Work presented in a commercial, proprietary, or modern real-time engine.
• Clear explanations of your individual contribution, responsibilities, workflow, and production decisions.
• Modular kits, reusable asset systems, trim-sheet workflows, material libraries, or scalable world-building solutions.
• An understanding of optimization, maintainability, asset reuse, and production constraints.
• At least one example in which you established or significantly influenced the visual quality bar for a scene, level, biome, or project.
• The ability to work from concept art, reference, blockouts, design requirements, or incomplete creative direction.
• Adaptability across different projects, genres, or visual styles.
• We also encourage applicants to include examples of:
• Work created by a team under their artistic or technical guidance.
• Before-and-after comparisons showing how they improved an environment, workflow, or production outcome.
• Benchmark assets, style guides, review materials, pipeline documentation, paintovers, or templates created for other artists.
• Please clearly identify your individual contribution to collaborative work.

How to apply

• Resume + portfolio link required.
• An art test may be required as part of the process.
• Please include shipped-game credits or comparable professional project experience where applicable.

Candidates may be asked to participate in a portfolio review, technical discussion, leadership interview, or art assessment as part of the selection process.

This position is currently open to candidates residing in the following Canada Provinces: Ontario or British Columbia.

Salary Range: $120,000 CAD to $130,000 CAD

What's in it for you?

• Opportunities to contribute to a variety of projects, clients, genres, platforms, and visual styles.
• The ability to influence environment-art quality and production practices across multiple teams.
• Collaboration with experienced developers and studios across the Keywords Studios organization.
• Professional-development and mentorship opportunities.
• Flexible remote, hybrid, and in-office work arrangements where available.
• 3 weeks of paid leave
• Benefits package including medical, dental and vision
• Sick Leave
• Disability Coverage
• Corporate holidays
• Professional Development