Principal Environment Artist
Remote · 12+ years experience · Remote · Posted Oct 7, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 12+ years experience
- Workplace
- Remote
- Location
- Remote
About the role
- Mob Entertainment is seeking a Principal Environment Artist to design and build exceptional, atmospheric environments for horror games.
- This role involves owning key benchmark environments, establishing visual and technical standards, and mentoring environment artists across pods.
Responsibilities
- Design and build exceptional, realistic and semi-stylised, atmospheric environments for horror games, with a focus on grounded, immersive interior spaces such as decayed rooms, derelict facilities, and unsettling domestic settings.
- Own and drive key benchmark environments from blockout through final polish, establishing the visual, technical, and quality standards other Environment Artists can build toward.
- Apply an expert understanding of composition, form, lighting, color, shape, and value to guide the player’s eye, establish strong visual hierarchy, and amplify psychological tension.
- Develop and champion modular, trim-based, and reusable environment workflows that enable artists to build flexible, high-quality, performant environments efficiently within Unreal Engine.
- Partner with Narrative and Design leads to translate high-level creative direction into compelling, cohesive environments that support gameplay, worldbuilding, and mood-driven storytelling.
- Collaborate closely with Level Design, Lighting, Materials, and Technical Art to solve complex environment challenges and ensure environments meet both visual quality targets and gameplay requirements.
- Provide project-wide Environment Art reviews across pods, identifying quality gaps and driving solutions that improve visual consistency, asset usage, composition, readability, and overall environment quality.
- Mentor Environment Artists across pods through hands-on collaboration, reviews, and critical feedback, raising the artistic bar while reinforcing alignment with the project’s visual direction.
- Be the subject-matter expert for Environment Art, helping define the project’s artistic standards, workflows, and overall quality bar.
- Identify discipline-wide artistic and production challenges and develop scalable workflows, standards, and solutions that improve both visual quality and team efficiency.
Requirements
- Exceptional portfolio demonstrating mastery of environment set dressing, modeling, and texturing for realistic and semi-stylised, atmospheric spaces, reflecting shipped AAA-quality work or an equivalent visual bar.
- Expert command of art fundamentals, including composition, lighting, form, color, shape, value, and visual hierarchy, with the ability to clearly articulate and teach these principles to others.
- Expert-level understanding of modular environment construction, trim workflows, and reusable asset systems, with a proven ability to establish scalable workflows across large environments.
- Expert proficiency in industry-standard environment art tools such as Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, ZBrush, Marvelous Designer, Substance Designer/Painter, and Photoshop.
- Extensive experience with Unreal Engine 5, including level building, materials, scene assembly, optimization, and the technical judgment required to influence environment pipeline and architectural decisions.
- Proven ability to translate reference, narrative direction, and gameplay requirements into grounded, immersive worldbuilding, while establishing clear visual direction for other artists to follow.
- Deep understanding of horror visual language and mood construction, with the ability to manipulate space, scale, lighting, composition, and detail to create discomfort, suspense, and psychological tension.
- Demonstrated experience mentoring senior and developing artists, providing high-level artistic feedback, and influencing quality across multiple teams or areas of a project.
- Excellent communication and cross-discipline collaboration skills, with a demonstrated ability to influence artistic and technical decisions beyond the immediate Environment Art team.
- Experience shipping at least one AAA or equivalent high-quality title. Experience shipping horror or atmospheric, tension-driven games is strongly preferred.
Preferred qualifications
- 12+ years of gaming experience with progressive responsibilities and impressive trajectory
- Shipped several games (preferrably some that are horror)
- Experience developing procedural workflows, material systems, environment tools, or pipeline improvements in partnership with Tech Art.
Benefits
- Profit sharing
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- 401(k) matching
- FSA/HSA
- Paid time off
- Sick time
- Holidays
- Parental leave
Workplace
- Remote position (#LI-Remote)
Skills
- Maya
- 3ds Max
- Blender
- ZBrush
- Marvelous Designer
- Substance Designer
- Photoshop
- Unreal Engine 5
