Technical Artist - Optimizing AA UE5 Game for Cloud Streaming (Remote, Americas or Europe)

About us:

At Amber, we're always on the hunt for the most talented individuals in the industry to join our team. We're dedicated to delivering top-notch service to our customers and know that our employees are key to making that happen. We offer attractive compensation packages and plenty of chances to grow with us, and we're always on the lookout for ways to do things better. Our team works together towards common goals and we value each member's contributions to our mission of continuous improvement and innovation.

About the role:

Amber is looking for a Technical Artist to help bring a high-quality AA Unreal Engine 5 game to a cloud streaming platform. It's a large, content-heavy, choice-driven narrative game, built on one of the most recognized entertainment franchises. The platform itself reaches a massive audience.

The game has a stylized, non-photorealistic look, built on custom outline and post-process shaders. Your job is to fit it into a tighter hardware budget than the PC version without losing that look. The work spans GPU profiling, content optimization, art style preservation, platform budgets, and editor tooling. Visual quality and readability come first, ahead of raw framerate. This is about measured trade-offs, not blanket cuts.

You'll work with a team of Unreal engineers, technical artists, UX designers, QAs, and production. This is a content and GPU role, not a code role. Engine code, platform integration, CPU performance, and loading belong to engineering.

This is a remote contract engagement, expected to run about 4 months. Preferred working hours are 8am-5pm US Central Time. European candidates should overlap with a minimum of 8am-12pm US Central Time.

What to expect from the process:

• Profile Preselection: Our Talent Acquisition team will review your profile.
• Talent Acquisition Screening: Selected candidates will be contacted to undergo an initial interview to discuss their experience, skills, and fit for the role.
• Test: Qualified candidates will be invited to complete an assessment to demonstrate their abilities.
• Interviews: Finalists will participate in technical and cultural interviews to assess their proficiency and compatibility with our team.

The quest (what you will do):

• Profile GPU cost and memory use with Unreal Insights, RenderDoc, and similar tools.
• Use profiling data to prioritize work. Verify that each change delivers a measurable gain without visible quality loss.
• Hand over non-art bottlenecks to engineering, with profiling data.
• Reduce shader cost, overdraw, draw calls, and texture memory.
• Tune Lumen, Nanite, and Virtual Shadow Maps for performance.
• Create LODs and simplify materials where global settings fall short.
• Protect the art style. Check every optimization against the original look: outlines, shading, post-process effects, lighting mood, and fog.
• Check how line work and fine detail hold up under cloud streaming. Adjust content where needed.
• Define content budgets and help engineering tune scalability settings.
• Build editor tools and validation checks to catch budget issues.
• Flag visual and performance risks early. Explain trade-offs to internal and external stakeholders.

The skills (required qualifications):

• At least 4 years as a technical artist in games, including large or complex projects.
• At least 3 years of hands-on Unreal Engine 4 or 5 experience.
• Proven experience profiling and optimizing content in production games using GPU and memory profiling tools.
• Strong knowledge of materials, textures, LODs, lighting, VFX, and animation.
• Hands-on production experience with Lumen, Nanite, and Virtual Shadow Maps.
• Strong grasp of real-time rendering. This includes shader and material optimization, overdraw reduction, and texture memory management.
• Experience building Unreal editor tools or validation scripts.
• Experience with Perforce or a similar version control system.
• Comfortable explaining visual and performance trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders, in English, spoken and written.

Nice to have:

• Experience optimizing stylized, non-photorealistic, or heavily post-processed visuals.
• Understanding of how cloud streaming and video encoding affect visual quality.
• Experience porting or downporting games to lower-spec hardware.
• Experience with Unreal Engine 5.5 or later.
• Experience working with outsourced teams and external development partners.
• Shipped at least one AAA or high-quality AA title.

The reward:

• A fun and dynamic industry where you can make a difference.
• Professional and friendly work environment.
• Awesome and talented colleagues.
• Support from all your teammates.