Senior Technical Artist

Business Unit
LIGHTSPEED STUDIOS is made up of passionate players who advance the art & science of game development through great stories, great gameplay, and advanced technology. We are focused on bringing next generation experiences to gamers who want to enjoy them anywhere, anytime, across multiple genres and devices.
About the Hiring Team
Lightspeed Studios Art Department brings together artists who focus on creative work across concept design, 3D modeling, animation, VFX, technical art, and cinematics. Driven by a shared love for games, the team explores how new and emerging technology can elevate our craft — building visually forward-looking IP and raising the bar on art quality across Lightspeed's games.
What the Role Entails
We are looking for a Senior Technical Artist dedicated to rendering for an unannounced next-generation title built in Unreal Engine 5. You will own shaders, rendering systems, and environment tooling; translating visual ambition into something that holds a real frame budget. This is a graphics-technical role rather than a generalist art-pipeline or art-authoring role. It sits with the art team but works at the level of the renderer.
- Author and maintain the project's shader and material systems in UE5 and set the technical standards that environment and art teams build against.

- Work hands-on with UE5's core rendering stack: Lumen, Nanite, Virtual Shadow Maps, and MegaLights, including their costs, limitations, and behaviors across target platforms.

- Build and maintain environment and content tooling that helps artists author correctly within those systems.

- Extend and improve the existing art pipeline in collaboration with engineering and production; this role supports pipeline work, not a greenfield pipeline build.

- Prototype graphics features and diagnose rendering, shader, and in-engine issues alongside art, engineering, and production teams.

- Profile and optimize GPU and CPU frame time, memory, and visual-quality trade-offs, and make the case with measured data.

- Document technical decisions and share knowledge so the solutions you build stay maintainable by the wider team.

Who We Look For

- Hands-on Unreal Engine 5 experience is essential.

- Deep, engineer-level understanding of UE5 rendering systems: Lumen, Nanite, Virtual Shadow Maps, and MegaLights: how they work, what they cost, and where they break down.

- Strong graphics fundamentals: real-time rendering pipelines, physically based rendering (PBR), lighting and shadowing models, GPU performance characteristics, and the linear algebra and calculus that underpin 3D graphics.

- Ability to author and debug shaders (HLSL/GLSL or equivalent) and reason about instruction cost, overdraw, and shader budgets.

- Working literacy in material, lighting, and environment authoring, enough to judge visual quality and collaborate with artists while operating primarily on the technical side.

- Experience collaborating inside an established content pipeline: asset import, validation, version control, and performance budgets.

- Clear written and verbal communication, strong problem-solving skills, and the ability to work independently across art, engineering, and production.

Desirable Skills & Experience:

- C++ or engine-level shader authoring, and comfort reading rendering code.

- Python or C# scripting for DCC and editor tooling.

- Substance suite and/or Houdini for material and environment work.

- Profiling tools such as Unreal Insights, RenderDoc, or PIX, and experience managing platform budgets.

- Large-scale or open-world environment experience.

- Experience setting technical standards or mentoring other artists.

Location State(s)

US-California-Irvine, US-California-Los Angeles

The expected base pay range for this position in the location(s) listed above is $97,500.00 to $232,300.00 per year. Actual pay may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
Employees hired for this position may be eligible for a sign on payment, relocation package, and restricted stock units, which will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Subject to the terms and conditions of the plans in effect, hired applicants are also eligible for medical, dental, vision, life and disability benefits, and participation in the Company’s 401(k) plan. The Employee is also eligible for up to 15 to 25 days of vacation per year (depending on the employee’s tenure), up to 13 days of holidays throughout the calendar year, and up to 10 days of paid sick leave per year.
Your benefits may be adjusted to reflect your location, employment status, duration of employment with the company, and position level. Benefits may also be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.
Equal Employment Opportunity at Tencent
As an equal opportunity employer, we firmly believe that diverse voices fuel our innovation and allow us to better serve our users and the community. We foster an environment where every employee of Tencent feels supported and inspired to achieve individual and common goals.