Senior Technical Artist

• Senior UE5 Technical Artist, Defcon Zero | TriArts Games | Remote
• Join the team building Defcon Zero, a high-fidelity RTS powered by Unreal Engine 5.

We are looking for a Senior Technical Artist to join our technical art team, working on scalable materials, production tools, asset integration, and real-time optimization inside Unreal Engine 5. You will bridge the gap between art and development, helping our units, structures, environments, and battlefield effects meet high visual standards while remaining performant at RTS scale.

You will have direct ownership, work closely with both artists and developers, and see your work reflected throughout the final game.

What you'll own

• Performance and optimization: Profile and optimize materials, geometry, textures, lighting, shadows, foliage, and visual effects for large-scale RTS battles.
• Materials and shaders: Build scalable materials and shaders supporting faction colors, damage states, construction effects, and gameplay-driven visuals.
• Art pipeline: Build reliable workflows between Maya, Substance Painter, and Unreal Engine 5 for asset preparation, importing, validation, and automation.
• Tools development: Create tools and scripts that reduce repetitive work and improve iteration speed for artists and designers.
• Environment systems: Develop workflows for landscapes, foliage, instancing, procedural placement, and level assembly across RTS camera distances.
• Gameplay visual integration: Connect art and effects to gameplay, including construction, destruction, damage feedback, abilities, and world-space indicators.

Destruction systems: Build and optimize destruction for vehicles, structures, and environments using Chaos and other techniques, covering fracturing, damage states, debris, and effects.

• Visual effects support: Help VFX artists integrate, troubleshoot, and optimize Niagara systems and materials while maintaining gameplay readability.
• Technical problem-solving: Resolve rendering, shading, lighting, geometry, texture, import, and performance issues across the art pipeline.
• Standards and documentation: Define asset budgets, naming conventions, material and LOD guidelines, validation checks, and production documentation.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional technical art experience in games.
• Strong Unreal Engine 5 experience in asset integration, rendering, and production tools.
• Advanced knowledge of the Material Editor, master materials, material instances, and shader optimization.
• Strong understanding of lighting, shadows, geometry, texture memory, draw calls, shader complexity, and overdraw.
• Hands-on experience profiling and resolving performance bottlenecks in Unreal Engine.
• Experience with LODs, instancing, culling, and scalability settings.
• Hands-on Chaos Destruction experience, including Geometry Collections, fracturing, clustering, physics fields, and runtime optimization.
• Hands-on experience integrating and implementing VFX in Unreal Engine 5, including Niagara systems and runtime performance optimization.
• Experience integrating art and visual systems with gameplay alongside developers.
• Working knowledge of Blueprints, HLSL, C++, or Unreal Engine editor plugins.
• Experience with Unreal Engine's PCG framework, landscapes, and large-scale foliage.
• Able to work independently and collaborate with artists, animators, designers, and developers.
• At least one shipped game with a significant personal contribution.
• Fluent in written and spoken English.
• Nice to have
• Experience with Houdini, and procedural pipelines.
• Knowledge of Maya and Substance Painter workflows, including topology, UVs, baking, and texture preparation.
• Tool development and automation experience using Python, editor scripting, or similar solutions.
• Experience creating real-time VFX using Niagara, including weapon effects, explosions, abilities, and environmental effects.
• Experience evaluating and optimizing Nanite, Lumen, and Virtual Shadow Maps.
• Experience with RTS, strategy, or high-unit-count games.
• A passion for RTS games.

Who you are

• You understand both art and technology.
• You turn visual goals into reliable, scalable technical solutions.
• You balance visual quality, gameplay readability, and performance.
• You identify problems early and take ownership of solutions.
• You debug methodically, validate improvements through profiling, and communicate clearly.
• You build tools around the needs of their users.
• You collaborate proactively and welcome constructive feedback.
• You independently learn and introduce new tools, workflows, and methods.

What we offer

• The Forefront of PC Development: Join one of Israel's few studios building a high-fidelity, hardcore PC strategy game in Unreal Engine 5.
• Fully Remote: Work remotely with clear communication, personal ownership, and focused collaboration.
• A Veteran Team: Work with experienced developers and artists who share a passion for RTS and high production standards.
• Growth Potential: Expand your influence, ownership, and responsibility as the studio and Defcon Zero grow.
• Direct Impact: Shape the game's visuals, performance, and production through your tools and technical solutions.
• Collaborative Culture: Join a friendly, dedicated team committed to the professional standards needed to ship a top-tier game.
• Originally posted on Himalayas