Senior Materials Artist II | STARCRAFT | Irvine, CA

Blizzard Entertainment • Irvine, CA

2d • $99,200 - $183,520 • Hybrid

About The Position

Blizzard Entertainment is assembling a team to build the next chapter of STARCRAFT, returning to a universe forged in interstellar war. This mission offers something new: crafting an original story-driven, open-world shooter while honoring the legacy of one of Blizzard's most beloved games. We are here to reignite this universe alongside you. We are here to make STARCRAFT, and it's about damn time. We are looking for a Senior Materials Artist II to help craft this new game for Blizzard. As a key member of the development team, you will define and advance the material pipeline, material library, and visual quality standards used across character and environment assets. You are comfortable operating in a dynamic environment, navigating fluid deadlines and changing priorities with purpose. This role offers a hybrid work week, with a mix of work-from-home and on-site days, based out of our Irvine studio.

Requirements

• 12+ years of applicable professional experience in materials, textures, surfacing, or a related game art discipline.
• Demonstrated experience shipping multiple AAA games in a senior or principal materials, texture, surfacing, or related art role.
• Expert knowledge of Substance 3D Designer and Substance 3D Painter, with a portfolio demonstrating advanced material authoring and implementation.
• Expert understanding of physically based rendering, lighting and material interaction, texture creation, optimization, and industry-standard material workflows.
• Experience contributing through multiple phases of AAA game development, including early research and development, pre-production, production, optimization, and final delivery.
• Experience solving complex pipeline and implementation challenges in partnership with engineers and technical artists using a modern AAA game engine such as Unreal Engine.
• Proven ability to act independently as a discipline expert, establish standards, and provide leadership across work groups without relying on formal people-management authority.
• Strong communication, collaboration, mentorship, ownership, and accountability, with the ability to align creative and technical partners around complex goals.

Nice To Haves

• Experience building or maintaining shared material libraries across character and environment teams.
• Experience developing tools, templates, or procedural workflows that improve material quality and production efficiency.
• Experience with photography, scanning, photogrammetry, or structured reference-gathering workflows.
• Broad understanding of adjacent game art disciplines, including concept art, lighting, 3D art, shaders, and rendering.
• Experience supporting art outsourcing partners or external development teams.

Responsibilities

• Create and integrate high-quality materials for natural environments, architecture, characters, and props.
• Define and maintain physically based rendering standards, material authoring guidelines, and quality benchmarks across the game.
• Develop and evolve scalable material pipelines, libraries, tools, and workflows in partnership with technical artists and engineers.
• Solve complex artistic and technical material challenges across production, optimization, and final implementation.
• Partner with art directors, art leads, designers, engineers, and production partners to establish priorities and achieve game goals.
• Lead material reviews, critiques, and technical evaluations to ensure work meets the established visual direction, performance requirements, and quality bar.
• Establish best practices for organized, reusable, efficient, and performant texture and material libraries.
• Mentor artists through documentation, demonstrations, feedback, and hands-on support that strengthens material craft across the team.
• Evaluate emerging tools and techniques and apply relevant advancements to improve visual quality and development efficiency.
• Champion collaboration, inclusive development practices, and a player-focused approach to visual quality.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance
• 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others
• Relocation assistance

What This Job Offers

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