Senior Technical Artist – Rendering & Shaders
Job Type: Full-Time
Location: Remote - Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming (Los Angeles area preferred)
About Snail Games USA
Snail Games strives to create the new high bar for gameplay experience in online gaming. We have been a global developer and publisher of digital entertainment since 2009 and are committed to pushing the boundaries of the industry.
About the Role
Snail Games USA is seeking a Senior Technical Artist to join our Art Center and provide hands-on technical art support across multiple Unreal Engine projects.
This is a broad production-focused Technical Artist role working between art and engineering to solve technical problems, improve workflows, and help teams deliver high-quality game content efficiently. The role will have a particular emphasis on Unreal Engine rendering, materials, and shaders, but responsibilities may shift based on project and production needs.
The ideal candidate has strong technical-art fundamentals and enough breadth to work across asset integration, optimization, tooling, pipelines, troubleshooting, and visual systems. They should be comfortable investigating ambiguous problems, collaborating directly with artists and engineers, and carrying solutions through implementation and validation.
Responsibilities
Provide hands-on technical art support across a range of game development and production needs.
Develop, maintain, and optimize Unreal Engine materials, shaders, and rendering workflows.
Investigate and resolve visual, technical, performance, and asset integration problems.
Integrate art assets and ensure they meet visual, technical, and runtime requirements.
Profile and optimize content for rendering performance, memory use, shader complexity, and scalability.
Establish and maintain practical standards for assets, materials, textures, meshes, LODs, collision, naming, and project organization.
Develop or improve tools and workflows that increase artist efficiency and reduce repetitive production work.
Support artists with technical setup, debugging, implementation, and optimization.
Work with Art, Engineering, Design, Animation, Lighting, and other disciplines to solve cross-discipline production problems.
Evaluate workflows and identify technical risks or production bottlenecks before they become larger problems.
Review assets and implementation for technical quality, consistency, and performance.
Create documentation, examples, and reusable best practices for distributed development teams.
Adapt to different technical-art needs as project priorities and production requirements change.
Take ownership of technical-art problems from investigation through implementation, testing, and validation.
Minimum Requirements
Professional Technical Artist experience in game development.
Strong Unreal Engine experience, preferably UE5.
Strong general knowledge of real-time game art pipelines and technical-art production.
Strong experience with Unreal materials, shaders, rendering, or related visual systems.
Understanding of real-time rendering, profiling, optimization, and performance constraints.
Experience with game asset pipelines including meshes, textures, materials, LODs, collision, and asset organization.
Experience integrating and troubleshooting production assets in-engine.
Demonstrated ability to solve problems spanning both artistic and technical concerns.
Ability to independently investigate unfamiliar problems and develop practical production solutions.
Strong communication skills and experience collaborating directly with artists and engineers.
Ability to balance visual quality, production efficiency, technical constraints, and runtime performance.
Nice to Have
Python scripting or pipeline automation experience.
Unreal Blueprint experience.
HLSL or custom shader development experience.
Experience with procedural tools such as Houdini.
Experience with environment, character, vegetation, VFX, lighting, or procedural content pipelines.
Experience building reusable tools or workflows for artists.
Experience with DCC pipeline integration such as Maya, Blender, Substance, or similar tools.
Experience shipping PC or console titles using Unreal Engine.
Experience supporting multiple projects or production teams.
Salary Range
100,000-130,000 annually
Compensation within the range will depend on experience, technical breadth, demonstrated production ownership, and location.
Why Join the Snail Games USA Team?
True focus on work/life balance
Paid company holidays, vacation, and separate sick leave
Medical, dental, vision, and Life/LTD
401k with company match
Additional Information
As part of the Company's activities in video game development, publishing, and short-form video content creation, certain projects, discussions, or creative materials may include themes, visuals, language, or subject matter that some individuals could find mature, violent, sexual, graphic, or otherwise sensitive in nature ("Mature Content").
Examples may include, but are not limited to, depictions or descriptions of combat, violence, adult themes or relationships, suggestive or satirical humor, or strong language. Employees are expected to engage with such material in a professional and creative context as part of their job duties.
Professional game-development technical art experience, strong Unreal Engine materials, shaders, rendering, profiling, optimization, and asset pipeline skills, plus cross-functional collaboration and problem-solving ability.
Key Responsibilities
- developing shaders
- integrating assets
- optimizing rendering
Skills & Tools
Unreal Engine, UE5, Python, Unreal Blueprint, HLSL, Houdini, Maya, Blender, Substance
Job Details
- Category: Design
- Seniority: Senior Level
- Commitment: Full Time
- Workplace: Remote — Alaska or Arizona or California or Colorado or Connecticut or Florida or Georgia or Illinois or Maine or Missouri or New Jersey or Nevada or North Carolina or Ohio or Pennsylvania or Texas or Washington or Wyoming or Beverly Hills or Los Angeles
- Salary: USD 100,000 – 130,000 / year
- Languages: English
Benefits
- 401k matching
- Generous paid time off
- Retirement plan
About Snail Games USA
A global developer and publisher of digital entertainment and online gaming content. — Industry: Media and Communications