The person we're looking for: We are seeking a highly experienced
Senior Environment Artist with deep expertise in
large-scale world creation, set dressing,
terrain generation,
landscape development, procedural techniques and
advanced shader authoring. We are looking for an experienced Environment Artist to join our team and help bring immersive, visually stunning worlds to life. This role requires strong artistic vision, technical expertise, and collaboration skills to influence environment art quality and support a team of artists through mentorship and knowledge sharing. The ideal candidate has a deep understanding of composition, lighting, materials, and environmental storytelling, with a proven track record of creating high-quality game environments.
As a Senior Environment Artist, you will collaborate with Art Directors, Leads, Designers, and Technical Artists to establish and maintain the visual direction for environments while ensuring assets meet both artistic and technical standards. Additionally, you will mentor and support other artists, helping to refine workflows and ensure smooth production pipelines.
This position is in-office in Bellevue, WA and reports to the Lead Environment Artist. Responsibilities:- Create and own large-scale environments from block out through final polish.
- Design and develop realistic terrains, biomes, landscapes, and natural ecosystems.
- Build modular environment kits and world-building pipelines for massive open worlds.
- Support complex environment art efforts and serve as a subject matter expert for large scale world creation, mentor a team of artists, providing quality bar-setting examples, constructive feedback and fostering professional growth.
- Work closely with Art Directors, Leads, Designers, and Technical Artists to ensure visual consistency and technical feasibility.
- Develop and refine environmental storytelling techniques to create immersive game worlds.
- Contribute to the development and evolution of environment art workflows, tools, and best practices that improve quality, efficiency, and scalability.
- Identify production challenges, technical limitations, and content creation bottlenecks, collaborating with cross-functional teams to develop effective solutions.
- Optimize assets for performance and memory constraints while maintaining high visual fidelity.
- Support in managing art production pipelines to ensure deadlines and quality expectations are met.
- Work with engineers and level designers to ensure seamless asset integration into the game engine.
- Stay up to date with industry trends and push the boundaries of game environment art.
A Typical Day May Include: - Reviewing builds with an eye to maintaining a high-quality bar while respecting project or technical requirements.
- Communicating with leadership to align on various topics like art direction and project timelines.
- Creating high-quality game art content.
- Providing constructive feedback to other artists to establish best practices and document workflows.
Portfolio Requirements:Please include:
- High-quality environment art for video games, including examples of realistic work and demonstrated understanding of composition, lighting, and asset pipelines.
- Examples of large-scale environments or open-world scenes.
- Terrain and landscape breakdowns.
- Shader/material examples.
- Wireframes and optimization examples where applicable.
- Breakdown documentation demonstrating your workflow and technical contribution.
Qualifications:- 5-8+ years of experience as an environment artist in the video game industry with at least 2 shipped titles.
- Strong leadership and mentorship skills, with experience guiding and supporting a team of artists.
- Proficiency in industry tools such as Blender, Substance Suite, Zbrush and Photoshop.
- Deep knowledge of landscape creation tools, such as Houdini, World Machine, Gaea etc.
- Deep knowledge in the creation and analysis of pixel shaders.
- Experience using photo scan data as well as satellite imagery.
- Experience with Unreal Engine, including material and pixel shader creation.
- Deep understanding of PBR workflows, composition, lighting, and environmental storytelling.
- Experience with terrain systems, modular and procedural content workflows.
- Vegetation content creation.
- Strong understanding of real-world architecture, set dressing and infrastructure.
- Ability to balance artistic vision with technical constraints for optimized performance.
- Strong communication and problem-solving skills, with the ability to work collaboratively across teams.
- Excellent English written and verbal communication ability.
Personal Attributes:- Proactive, self-motivated, and able to work independently.
- Passion for video games and interactive entertainment.
- Strong desire to learn and stay updated with the latest industry trends and technologies.
What we offer:- A highly competitive total compensation package
- Comprehensive employer funded healthcare - ensuring you pay nothing out of pocket for in-network medical care
- Employer-paid premiums for dental, vision, short & long-term disability, life insurance, and AD&D insurance
- Generous benefits include 20 days PTO, 12 paid holidays and a studio-wide holiday break annually
- Ample sick leave days annually to prioritize your well-being
- Health & wellness, video game, and continuing education reimbursements
- Industry-leading family planning and fertility care benefits, including gender-affirming care, through Carrot Fertility
- Enjoy meal reimbursements, and snacks and beverages for in office staff
- 401K with a company match for your financial well-being
- Option to work remotely 1 day a week
In Washington, the expected salary range for this position is $103,000- $155,000. The listed expected salary range represents a good faith estimate and the actual pay may depend on a variety of job-related factors that can include experience, education, skills, and location.
