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Salary: USD 152,000 - 198,000 / annual
The Believer Company is seeking an Environment Art Lead for a hands-on role at a global games studio. This is a hybrid individual-contributor and leadership position: approximately 75% of your time will be spent creating final-quality environment assets and scenes in Unreal Engine 5, including modular architecture kits, props, terrain, foliage, materials, and lighting from blockout through polish. The remaining 25% involves leading a small environment art team by translating the Game Art Director's vision into cohesive standards, providing style guidance and feedback to environment artists, owning the pipeline from concept to engine, managing the team, and coordinating with outsourcing or freelance partners as the team grows.
You will collaborate closely with the Game Art Director, Concept Artists, and other game leads to ensure environment art aligns with the project's overall visual direction. You'll represent environment art in production planning, scope work, flag risks early, and make tradeoffs between ambition and delivery visible. You'll also stay current with industry trends and advancements in environment art, particularly generative AI, and recommend new techniques or tools to improve quality and efficiency.
The role is fully remote with asynchronous work across time zones, requiring a few hours of daily overlap with US Pacific time. This position was designed for senior or principal artists who have been pulled toward leadership, or leads from larger studios who miss hands-on work.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 6+ years of experience in environment art creation for games, with at least one shipped title where you owned significant environment work end to end
- Portfolio demonstrating both range and control: stylized environments with strong composition, material read, and lighting (not just isolated props); in-engine work and breakdowns strongly preferred
- Deep Unreal Engine experience: level building, material editor, Lumen/Nanite-era lighting and performance considerations, and working understanding of how art decisions affect frame budget
- Strong proficiency in industry-standard 2D or 3D software: Photoshop, ZBrush, Substance Painter and Designer, Maya, Blender, or 3DS Max; modular kit-building and trim-sheet workflows should be second nature
- Excellent communication, mentorship, and collaboration skills; comfort working remotely and asynchronously across time zones
- Small-team experience where you wore multiple hats and made scope calls without a playbook
