Lead Technical Artist

AGBO • Raleigh, NC

7d

About The Position

AGBO is looking for a Lead Technical Artist to join our Interactive team. This is a generalist hands-on leadership role for someone who thrives at the intersection of art and engineering – equally comfortable troubleshooting a shader, optimizing a character rig, refining lighting set up or building the tools that make an entire art team faster and more effective. You will set technical direction, and establish best practice.

Requirements

• Proven experience as a Technical Artist with a generalist background spanning lighting, character, and environment art
• Prior lead experience strongly preferred
• Strong hands-on shader development experience (HLSL/GLSL, node-based shader graphs, or engine-specific shader languages)
• Demonstrated experience building custom tools and pipelines to support art workflows
• Deep familiarity with Unreal Engine and standard DCC tools (Maya, Blender, Houdini, Substance, ZBrush, etc.)
• Solid understanding of rigging, character setup, lighting workflows, and environment/asset optimization for real-time rendering
• Experience leading or mentoring a team of technical artists with strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills
• A problem-solving mindset with the ability to move fluidly between hands-on production work and high-level pipeline/tooling strategy
• Passion for interactive storytelling and a strong eye for visual quality balanced with technical performance.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the lead of the Technical Artist team, providing mentorship, code/workflow review, and day-to-day guidance to other technical artists
• Work across multiple disciplines – lighting, character, environment, VFX and animation – providing generalist technical art support wherever it’s needed
• Design, build, and maintain shaders that balance visual fidelity with real-time performance
• Develop and maintain custom tools and pipelines (DCC plugins, in-engine editor tools, asset validation/ automation) that improves artist workflows and production efficiency
• Partner closely with engineering, art direction, and production to define technical standards, budgets, and best practices across disciplines
• Diagnose and resolve technical artist issues related to rigging, shading, lighting, and asset optimization
• Own the technical art pipeline end-to-end, identifying bottlenecks and proactively building solutions before they become blockers
• Collaborate cross-functionally with art, engineering, and production leads to ensure technical feasibility
• Perform all other duties as assigned

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed