Senior Technical Artist - UE5

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 a new high bar for gameplay experiences 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 that sits at the intersection of art and engineering. You’ll partner with artists, engineers, designers, and other disciplines to solve technical challenges, improve workflows, optimize game content, and help teams deliver high-quality visuals efficiently.

We are open to Technical Artists with different areas of specialization. Your strengths may be in rendering and shaders, tools and pipelines, environment workflows, character pipelines, VFX, procedural content, optimization, asset integration, or other areas of technical art. The exact focus of the role may evolve based on project and production needs.

The ideal candidate has strong technical-art fundamentals, deep hands-on Unreal Engine experience, and the ability to independently investigate ambiguous problems and turn them into practical, scalable solutions.

Responsibilities

• Provide hands-on technical art support across multiple Unreal Engine projects and production teams.

• Partner with Art and Engineering to develop technical solutions that balance visual quality, performance, and production efficiency.

• Investigate and resolve technical, visual, performance, workflow, and asset-integration issues.

• Develop, maintain, and improve tools, pipelines, systems, and workflows for artists.

• Support the integration and implementation of environments, characters, materials, textures, VFX, animation, lighting, and other game content as needed.

• Profile and optimize game content for rendering performance, memory usage, scalability, and platform requirements.

• Develop or optimize materials, shaders, and rendering workflows where applicable.

• Establish and maintain practical technical standards for assets, materials, textures, meshes, LODs, collision, naming, and project organization.

• Build reusable tools and automation that reduce repetitive work and improve artist efficiency.

• Support procedural or data-driven workflows where appropriate.

• Work directly with artists to troubleshoot technical issues and improve content pipelines.

• Collaborate with Engineering, Design, Animation, VFX, Lighting, and other disciplines to solve cross-functional production challenges.

• Identify technical risks, workflow inefficiencies, and production bottlenecks before they become larger problems.

• Review assets and implementation for technical quality, consistency, scalability, and runtime performance.

• Create documentation, examples, templates, and reusable best practices for distributed development teams.

• Adapt to different technical-art challenges as project priorities and production requirements evolve.

• Take ownership of technical-art problems from investigation and prototyping through implementation, testing, and validation.

Minimum Requirements

• Professional Technical Artist experience in game development.

• Strong hands-on Unreal Engine experience, preferably UE5.

• Strong understanding of real-time game art pipelines and technical-art production.

• Demonstrated expertise in one or more technical-art disciplines, such as:

• Rendering, materials, or shaders

• Tools and pipeline development

• Environment or world-building pipelines

• Character or animation pipelines

• VFX or lighting workflows

• Procedural content creation

• Performance optimization

• Asset integration and production workflows

• Experience profiling, troubleshooting, and optimizing real-time game content.

• Strong understanding of game asset pipelines including meshes, textures, materials, LODs, collision, and asset organization.

• Experience integrating and debugging production assets in-engine.

• Ability to solve problems that span both artistic and technical concerns.

• Ability to independently investigate unfamiliar problems and develop practical solutions.

• Strong communication and cross-disciplinary collaboration skills.

• Ability to balance visual quality, production efficiency, technical constraints, and runtime performance.

Nice to Have

• Python scripting, automation, or pipeline development experience.

• Unreal Blueprint experience.

• HLSL or custom shader development experience.

• Experience with procedural tools such as Houdini.

• Experience with Maya, Blender, Substance, or other DCC tools and pipeline integration.

• Experience with environment, character, animation, vegetation, VFX, lighting, or procedural content pipelines.

• Experience building reusable tools, plugins, utilities, or workflows for artists.

• Experience with profiling and optimization tools in Unreal Engine.

• Experience developing content for PC and/or console platforms.

• Experience shipping games using Unreal Engine.

• Experience supporting multiple projects, teams, or disciplines simultaneously.

Salary Range

$100,000-$150,000 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

Work Authorization

Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

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.