Real-Time 3D Asset Engineer

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory•Laurel, MD

23h•Onsite

About The Position

We are seeking a Real-Time 3D Asset Engineer with technical art skills to help us create modern training systems, compelling visual tools, and real-time content pipelines for critical national security challenges. You’ll join a multidisciplinary team that creates interactive training and visualization tools grounded in real-world form, function, and engineering detail. In this role, you’ll pair production-art judgment with the technical curiosity to build tools, write shaders, and solve pipeline problems. As a Real-Time 3D Asset Engineer, your primary responsibility will be to create, optimize, and integrate real-time 3D assets, materials, and scenes for training systems, engineering visualizations, interactive tools, and mission-focused applications. You will build production-ready models, textures, and materials from reference photos, CAD, 3D scans, photogrammetry, engineering drawings, and other source material, with an emphasis on equipment, environments, facilities, and other hard-surface assets. You will optimize 3D assets for real-time performance, including polycount, draw calls, texture memory, levels of detail, colliders, materials, and scene organization. You will develop and maintain source-to-engine asset pipelines that help artists and engineers move content from reference material and 3D tools into Unity, Unreal, or other real-time engines. You will create tools, scripts, shaders, import/export workflows, and asset-processing utilities that streamline real-time content production. You will work with artists, engineers, and software developers to troubleshoot asset, rendering, shader, lighting, source control, and build issues across production pipelines. You will help shape practical technical art standards for reference gathering, asset quality, visual accuracy, optimization, source control, and repeatable workflows.

Requirements

Have a bachelor’s degree in game art, technical art, digital art, computer graphics, game development, engineering, architecture, a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
Have 3+ years of professional experience creating real-time 3D art for games, AR/VR, training systems, engineering visualization, simulation, or other interactive applications.
Have a portfolio, demo reel, or project examples that show finished 3D models, textures, materials, or scenes based on real-world source material.
Have experience with 3D content tools and real-time engine workflows, such as Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, Houdini, Substance tools, Unity, Unreal Engine, proprietary game engines, or similar tools.
Have used scripting, shader authoring, or programming to solve technical art problems, streamline workflows, improve materials, process assets, or support real-time content production.
Are able to obtain an Interim Secret level security clearance by your start date and can ultimately obtain Secret level clearance. If selected, you will be subject to a government security clearance investigation and must meet the requirements for access to classified information. Eligibility requirements include U.S. citizenship.

Nice To Haves

Experience as a technical artist, environment artist, hard-surface artist, material artist, real-time 3D artist, or in a related capacity on shipped games, AAA productions, training systems, simulations, or real-time visualization products.
Experience writing shaders, tools, plugins, asset processors, or pipeline automation with HLSL, Slang, C++, C#, Python, Java, or similar languages.
Experience with or interest in, 3D reconstruction, scan cleanup, CAD conversion, computer vision, image processing, procedural workflows, or real-world asset capture.
Experience optimizing meshes, textures, materials, shaders, lighting, memory use, draw calls, load times, or frame rate for real-time applications.
Experience with Unity, Unreal Engine, Git, GitLab, PlasticSCM, or source-controlled art and build pipelines in a production environment.

Responsibilities

Create, optimize, and integrate real-time 3D assets, materials, and scenes for training systems, engineering visualizations, interactive tools, and mission-focused applications.
Build production-ready models, textures, and materials from reference photos, CAD, 3D scans, photogrammetry, engineering drawings, and other source material, with an emphasis on equipment, environments, facilities, and other hard-surface assets.
Optimize 3D assets for real-time performance, including polycount, draw calls, texture memory, levels of detail, colliders, materials, and scene organization.
Develop and maintain source-to-engine asset pipelines that help artists and engineers move content from reference material and 3D tools into Unity, Unreal, or other real-time engines.
Create tools, scripts, shaders, import/export workflows, and asset-processing utilities that streamline real-time content production.
Work with artists, engineers, and software developers to troubleshoot asset, rendering, shader, lighting, source control, and build issues across production pipelines.
Help shape practical technical art standards for reference gathering, asset quality, visual accuracy, optimization, source control, and repeatable workflows.