Lead Environment Artist, Games Studio

This is a Full Time Job

Lead Environment Artist, Games Studio (Blue)

We're looking for a creative and highly-skilled Lead Environment Artist to help us forge the creative vision of a brand-new AAA multi-platform (PC, mobile, etc.) game. This is a unique opportunity to be at the heart of crafting and bringing to life worlds for one of Netflix's first generation of internally developed original games.

As Lead Environment Artist, you will define overall quality and construct 3D environments while managing a team to deliver consistent, high-quality environmental assets and locations. The ideal candidate is a well-organized leader with a strong, hands-on background with a devotion to sharing and mentoring. This role will involve leading all aspects of producing striking, high-quality, and optimized AAA environments.

We're building the foundation for a small, but ambitious, team of creators whose primary goal is to create a game experience that our players want to repeatedly come back to; and as our Lead Environment Artist, you will be able to create, ship, and run a game without any competing design constraints due to monetization

Quality is something that we are immensely proud to be aiming for, and we are looking at putting the right team together to help take us forward. We're looking for that group of leaders who are aligned with our core values, and care deeply about the experiences they create as well as the people they make them with. Those who bias towards action and are energized by the learning that comes with bold experimentation at an agile pace. As a part of Netflix, we strive to hire the best and value integrity, excellence, respect, inclusion, and collaboration.

Now is an amazing time to join Netflix as we seek to entertain the world. We have over 200 million paid members in over 190 countries, and we won't stop there

RESPONSIBILITIES
• Be the artistic leader and take ownership of delivering high quality, distinction, and style for our environments.
• Works closely with the Art Director to keep quality and style consistent across all environments.
• Manage environments from gray box to final engine implementation including geometry, shaders, textures, and engine-specific elements.
• Maintain areas of the project's style guide, which relate to the aesthetic and technical implementation of character assets.
• Implement initial game features within the game prototype in Unreal Engine; Focus on rapid prototyping to quickly iterate to ''find the look''
• Improve hands-on delivery of quality character prototypes and benchmarks to a superb level of skill and ability.
• Proactively contribute to driving the department and studio to the forefront of pioneering Games development.

REQUIREMENTS
• Minimum 10 years of relevant experience with 5 years of it being in a Lead/Senior artist role.
• Has worked on at least one AAA title as a Team Lead and has experience leading an external art team.
• Has an excellent understanding of the environment art pipeline, dependencies, and overall scope of the project.
• Display a mastery of sculpting and texturing and advanced knowledge in organic and hard surface modeling.
• Excellent knowledge of real-time modeling techniques (Shaders, PBR, Normal, Displacement, etc.)
• Solid knowledge of Unreal, Maya, Photoshop, Zbrush, and Substance Painter.
• You can arbitrate sensitively between creative desires and production requirements.
• Excellent foundation skills including composition, design, and color theory, and advanced knowledge of human and animal anatomy.
• Ability to create models for a range of art directions, from photo-realistic to stylized.
• Strong leadership and mentoring abilities and interpersonal skills.

NICE TO HAVE
• Environment concept skills
• Experience with Houdini
• World and vegetation creation tools experience
• Experience with Unreal Engine
• VFX authoring experience
• Scripting experience in MaxScript Python or MEL
• Passion for gaming
• A passion and understanding of world-building
• Strong portfolio that demonstrates a range of high-quality 3D art with examples of modeled, textured and lighting for levels

At Netflix, we carefully consider a wide range of compensation factors to determine your personal top of market. We rely on market indicators to determine compensation and consider your specific job, skills, and experience to get it right. These considerations can cause your compensation to vary and will also be dependent on your location.

The overall market range for roles in this area of Netflix is typically: $250,000 - $500,000

This market range is based on total compensation (vs. only base salary), which is in line with our compensation philosophy. Netflix is a unique culture and environment. Learn more here.