Lead Environment Artist
Job Summary
Job Description
Bonfire Studios seeks a Lead Environment Artist to guide their team in creating the immersive world of their new IP, Arkheron. Responsibilities include leading and mentoring a team of environment artists, driving the creative and technical vision for environment art, crafting immersive game environments from initial concepts, ensuring quality and efficiency of team output, collaborating with other disciplines, and balancing leadership with hands-on asset creation. The ideal candidate has 7+ years of AAA game development experience in a leadership role, a strong artistic eye, proficiency in industry-standard software (Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, etc.), and a passion for mentorship. This role requires strong ownership, self-drive, and the ability to thrive in a small, collaborative team environment.
Must have:
- 7+ years AAA experience in leadership role
- Proficient in Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter
- Strong artistic vision & world-building skills
- Experience with Unreal or Unity engine
- Excellent communication & collaboration skills
- Passionate about mentorship and team growth
Perks:
- Equity
- Comprehensive benefits package
15 skills required
Job Details
Bonfire Studios is seeking an exceptional Lead Environment Artist to guide our team in crafting the immersive world of our Arkheron, our latest original IP. The ideal candidate is a proven leader with a deep passion for world-building, a strong artistic vision, and the ability to mentor and inspire a team of talented artists.
In this role, you will be responsible for setting the artistic and technical standards for environment art, driving creative solutions, and ensuring our world is visually stunning and cohesive. This is an opportunity to take ownership, lead by example, and help shape both the game and the team.
Bonfire Studios thrives on collaboration, trust, and shared ownership. As a Lead Environment Artist, you will play a critical role in building a culture of excellence, fostering team growth, and ensuring that our environmental storytelling enhances gameplay and player experience.
About the role…
- Inspire and guide: Lead and mentor a team of environment artists, fostering a collaborative and growth-oriented environment by setting expectations and providing constructive feedback to help artists grow and succeed.
- Shape the vision: Drive the creative and technical vision for environment art, ensuring a consistent and high-quality aesthetic.
- Craft immersive worlds: Take high-level ideas and undefined concepts - even as rough as a whiteboard sketch - and develop them into fully realized game environments.
- Ensure quality and efficiency: Be accountable for the team’s output, delivering polished, immersive worlds that align with gameplay needs.
- Collaborate across disciplines: Work closely with design, engineering, and other teams to align art direction with gameplay, technical constraints, and performance goals. Ensure environment art assets meet artistic, technical, and optimization standards for a seamless player experience.
- Balance leadership and hands-on creation: You’ll lead a small, focused, highly collaborative team where you’ll push ideas forward independently, without much guidance, while adapting and iterating based on the needs of the game. You’ll set the standard for quality while guiding the team and contributing to asset creation.
- Embrace innovation: Research new tools, workflows, and techniques to push the quality bar.
- Build the team: Contribute to studio-wide hiring, onboarding, and team-building efforts to cultivate and grow our environment art discipline.
- Foster accountability and self-sufficiency within the team—while support is available, success in this role requires the ability to drive ideas forward and problem-solve proactively.
We’re excited about you because you…
- Are an experienced leader: You have leadership experience in a AAA environment art role and thrive on mentoring and developing teams.
- Thrive on ownership: You have a strong sense of ownership and enjoy being accountable for a team’s success.
- Are self-driven: You thrive in ambiguity and can take a high-level vision and turn it into reality without needing every detail defined.
- Have shipped a AAA title: You have 7+ years of experience as an Environment Artist in game development, with at least one shipped AAA title in a leadership role.
- Excel in small teams: You produce your best work on small, collaborative teams. If you produce your best work on big teams with lots of specialized roles, this is not the right fit for you.
- Have a strong artistic eye: You possess a keen eye for architecture, material definition, lighting, color theory, and world-building.
- Are technically proficient: You are highly proficient in Maya (or other 3D modeling packages), ZBrush, Photoshop, and Substance Painter.
- Understand game engines: You have extensive experience working with game engines (Unreal, Unity) and understand PBR materials, UV layout, performance optimizations, and world-building workflows.
- Value collaboration: You can effectively communicate and collaborate across disciplines.
- Are passionate about mentorship: You are passionate about team development and fostering a positive, inclusive work environment.
- Balance creativity and production: You understand how to balance creative vision with production realities and are skilled at making strategic trade-offs.
- Have a growth mindset: You value both teaching and learning from others.
The base salary range for this position is $196,500 - $247,133. If your experience is more (principal level) or less (mid-level), your salary will be more/less than that rate (based on market data). We consider candidates' potential impact holistically, not just their years of experience or skill level. There is also more to our total comp package than salary, we offer equity to every new hire as well as a comprehensive benefits package and more. We will be happy to share more about our compensation opportunities when we chat with you!
You can learn more about Bonfire's studio culture, team, benefits, and perks on our website: www.bonfirestudios.com. Any information you submit is used for recruiting purposes only, and is never shared. You can learn more in our privacy policy
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About The Company
Bonfire Studios is an independent game studio in Costa Mesa, California. Our purpose is to build friendships by creating legendary experiences that bring players closer together - united in a sense of adventure, exploration and fellowship.
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