Environment Art Lead

Job Description

There are many things that make Believers who we are, but our defining characteristic is an unwavering dedication to the player experience. We believe that player-first development is critical for games, esports, and all forms of media that allow us to engage with our favorite worlds and heroes. We are not just a game company, we are a company for Gamers. We believe that collaboration and diverse thought drive innovation, and we foster a development culture around that principle.

The art team at Believer has one goal: to create a beautiful and fun playground for our players. We create stunning visuals that transport our players to other worlds and give them an exciting, dynamic battlefield to play on.

We are seeking an Environment Art Lead who is, first and foremost, an environment artist. This is a hands-on role: roughly three-quarters of your time goes to building the world — biomes, architecture, set dressing, materials, and the hero spaces that define what our co-op, open-world game looks like in Unreal 5. The remaining quarter goes to leading the environment discipline on a small team: translating the Game Art Director's vision into standards everyone can build against, giving our environment artists the style guidance and feedback that makes their work sharper and more cohesive, and owning the pipeline from concept to engine. If you have been a senior or principal artist who keeps getting pulled toward leading, or a lead at a large studio who misses the work, this role was built for you. The ideal candidate has a strong understanding of stylized art direction, a hunger to understand how a game plays (not just what it looks like), and the judgment to know when to raise the bar and when to ship.

What you'll do

• Create final-quality environment assets and scenes in Unreal Engine 5 — modular architecture kits, props, terrain, foliage, materials, and lighting — from blockout through polish, and set the bar for the rest of the team
• Collaborate with the Game Art Director, Concept Artists, and other game leads to ensure environment art aligns with the project's overall visual direction and creative vision
• Provide regular, specific style guidance and feedback to the environment artists, keeping their work coherent with the art direction and with each other, and review environment assets to ensure they meet quality standards
• Represent environment art in planning: scope work with production, flag risk early, and make the tradeoffs between ambition and delivery visible
• Manage the Environment Art team and coordinate with outsourcing or freelance partners when we use them, helping to hire and onboard as the team grows
• Stay up to date with industry trends and advancements in environment art, particularly around generative AI, and recommend new techniques or tools that could improve the quality and efficiency of environment art production

What you'll need

Please note - research shows that certain groups of candidates may not apply to jobs unless they meet every single requirement. If you see yourself at Believer but don't check every requirement, we would still love to be in touch with you for current and future opportunities.

• 6+ years of experience in environment art creation for games, with at least one shipped title where you owned significant environment work end to end
• A portfolio that shows both range and control: stylized environments with strong composition, material read, and lighting — not just isolated props. In-engine work and breakdowns strongly preferred
• Deep Unreal Engine experience: level building, the material editor, Lumen/Nanite-era lighting and performance considerations, and a working understanding of how art decisions affect the frame budget
• Strong proficiency in industry-standard 2D or 3D software such as Photoshop, ZBrush, Substance Painter and Designer, and Maya, Blender, or 3DS Max. Modular kit-building and trim-sheet workflows should be second nature
• Excellent communication, mentorship, and collaboration skills, and comfort working remotely and asynchronously across time zones with a few hours of daily overlap to US Pacific
• Small-team experience, where you wore multiple hats and made scope calls without a playbook

What we offer:

Annual salary range: $152,000-$198,000

Making great games is hard, so we do our best to make the other parts less hard.

• Great compensation package and equity
• Medical, dental, vision, short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance. Believer pays 100% of monthly costs for these plans
• 10 observed holidays + 10 days for Winter Break and "Take What You Need" PTO policy
• Remote-friendly team #LI-Remote
• We are committed to continuing to expand our benefits and perks to support all Believers

Diversity

Believer is committed to creating a diverse environment where Believers of all backgrounds can do their best work and grow professionally.

About The Believer Company

Believer is a global games company with developers all over the world, headquartered in Los Angeles, California.

We've built our lives around creating and serving games we're proud of, from Words With Friends to League of Legends, from Destiny to Apex Legends. We hope you've enjoyed them, and if our wishes have come true, you're still playing them today.

We still think this is just the beginning.

We are Believers, bonded together by a deep love for players, and a commitment to put them at the center of the games we create, the worlds we build, the stories we tell, and the business we run to keep the fun going for as long as players keep believing.