Senior Unreal Technical Artist
Job Description:
Leidos is in search of an experienced Sr. Unreal Technical Artist to join our studio with an existing team of artists, programmers, and designers in creating “cutting edge” Virtual Reality (VR) and PC advanced training for the United States Air Force. Our client is a visionary leader that is bringing VR and digital training to the forefront of Air Force technical and specialty training for Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) analysts and operators around the world. This is a unique opportunity to leverage your proven AAA industry experience to create stunning photorealistic digital art for the U.S. Air Force training.
As a Sr. Unreal Technical Artist, you will ensure that the technology, tools, and processes are in place to deliver the creative vision of our projects. You will support a digital art team focused on photorealistic environments and characters for both PC and VR. This is a unique opportunity where your knowledge and expertise will enhance our team’s capabilities each day while also serving as a subject matter expert in techniques, methods, and best practices pioneered by Epic Games and the Unreal Engine. We are looking for your creativity, experience, and positive energy to create the Defense industries most immersive and comprehensive virtual training. Projects include building “digital twins” of military aircraft, vehicles, military hardware and replicating physical environments. This is an opportunity to make your creative voice heard in a collaborative setting with a company building innovative training solutions for the US Air force
· Bachelor’s degree with 8-12 years of related experience or 13+ years of related experience with no degree.
· 5-8+ years of direct experience with Unreal Engine in either the video game industry, architecture, advertising, film, or simulations on shipped products with concrete examples of your work.
· Extensive knowledge of all aspects of the Unreal Engine with heavy emphasis on Blueprints, Materials, Lighting, Animation, Niagara, Sequencer, and more.
· Collaborate with the art and technical teams guiding best practices for real-time asset optimization, promoting efficient workflows, and offering innovative tech solutions to maintain quality while maximizing performance.
· Establish and manage memory and performance structure.
· Streamline production by finding ways to automate tasks and improve processes.
· Experience with PBR techniques using Substance Suite (Painter, Alchemist, Designer, and Source).
· Experience creating Maya character rigs, wire controllers and GUI pickers for seamless export into Unreal.
· Experience working with motion capture data, workflows, facial capture, and retargeting.
· Experience writing custom Maya tools and scripts using Python and/or MEL.
· Desire to teach others and learn new techniques in the Unreal Engine.
· Motivated, self-directed, personable, strong verbal communication skills.
· Experience using Perforce for source control and JIRA for task management.
· Strong work ethic that strives for continuous process improvement and production efficiency.
· Experience maximizing performance in VR a big plus.
· Experience with photogrammetry content pipeline a plus.
· Ability to obtain security clearance (requires US citizenship).
· Ability to work in a dynamic cross-functional environment in a 100% teleworking environment.