Staff Environment Artist

Stone Kite • Seattle, WA

2h • $150,000 - $170,000 • Remote

About The Position

Stone Kite is a world-building studio that thoughtfully develops heroic universes across games, film, TV, comics, audio, and more. Built by veterans from game and entertainment studios such as Marvel, Disney, Pixar, Bungie, and Riot, our team leverages expertise and passion to build worlds that matter. We're looking for an experienced Environment Artist to lead environment art on our flagship project. Reporting to the Art Director, the ideal candidate brings deep expertise in realtime environment production across first- or third-person titles, strong Unreal Engine fluency, and a track record of owning pipelines and setting standards in a collaborative development environment. This role involves a high degree of creative autonomy. You will be expected to take initiative and work independently, seek out information and feedback to validate your decisions, and share your work early and often. Pursuing alignment with the art team, the Project Art Director, the game team as a whole, and other teams across the company is essential to success; utilizing empathetic communication with feedback skills and a spirit of curiosity. This role is a remote based position.

Requirements

• 6+ years of professional realtime environment art experience in first- or third-person AA-AAA games
• Multiple shipped titles as an environment artist
• Strong understanding of full environment production pipelines, from blockout to final implementation
• Deep familiarity with Unreal Engine workflows and tooling, including material and shader workflows
• Experience with modular environment construction
• Experience optimizing scenes for performance and memory constraints
• Strong portfolio demonstrating shipped or production-quality realtime environments
• Comfortable wearing multiple hats and self-directing in a small team environment
• Strong collaboration and communication skills with a passion for quality and excellence
• Ability to adapt and problem solve in a fast-paced startup environment

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with procedural content generation tools like Houdini is a plus
• Strong understanding of lighting, composition, color, and spatial storytelling

Responsibilities

• Create high-quality realtime environments in Unreal Engine
• Build modular environment palette, shaders, and textures
• Own scene assembly, composition, lighting, and environmental storytelling
• Collaborate closely with art direction to establish the game's visual identity
• Develop scalable workflows for a small team that will grow over time
• Optimize environments for performance while maintaining high visual fidelity
• Work across palette creation, set dressing, lighting, and post-processing to craft the “final frame”
• Help define technical standards for environment production inside Unreal
• Collaborate with the level designer to support and enhance gameplay
• Serve as a major stakeholder in rendering pipeline discussions
• Build and own asset pipelines that empower other team members
• Engage in team brainstorming, playtest, and feedback sessions
• Provide feedback for teams working across different forms of media
• Partner with the Art Director on future staffing plans including outsourcing
• As the team grows, participate in interviews, take on direct reports, and help build a world-class environment art team

Benefits

• Competitive medical, vision, and dental benefits
• Generous PTO
• Winter break
• 401k Options
• Monthly meals stipend
• Opportunities for learning and development across multiple areas of media and forms of storytelling
• Be a part of an early-stage, innovative team

What This Job Offers

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