Hard Surface Outsource Lead

About Us

At the core of Epic’s success are talented, passionate people. Epic prides itself on creating a collaborative, welcoming, and creative environment. Whether it’s building award-winning games or crafting engine technology that enables others to make visually stunning interactive experiences, we’re always innovating. Being Epic means being a part of a team that continually strives to do right by our community and users. We’re constantly innovating to raise the bar of engine and game development.

About the Role

Epic Games is searching for an experienced Hard Surface Outsourcing Lead to support and supervise creative hard surface content provided by outsource partners. Working alongside Hard Surface Art Leads, and reporting to the Hard Surface Cosmetics Lead, the Outsourcing Lead will provide front-line creative feedback for work submitted for Fortnite. Though the role will be mainly supervisory, the individual should be an experienced artist, having worked in AAA titles before, and have a solid hands-on art background, with a very strong foundation of 3D modeling for both hard and soft surfaces.

The ideal candidate would be a talented 3D artist who is able to communicate equally effectively, both with outsource partners and internal teams, to ensure the timely delivery of high-quality assets to the next stage in the art pipeline. Their skills will include a keen artistic eye for ‘clean’ 3D modeling, documenting existing pipelines, creating blockouts, paintovers and exemplar assets, and ultimately, providing clear visual feedback to vendors at each stage of the process.

Responsibilities

• Work closely with the HS Cosmetics Lead and HS Art Leads to pull together clear creative direction for the assets to be created, and then ensure this information is packaged and conveyed to the vendor as clearly as possible.
• Work with Directors, Production, and internal partners to evaluate, hire, and onboard vendors.
• Collect or generate detailed documentation, video reference, and examples of art asset production, procedures, and engine requirements to support the external vendors.
• If required, make any needed fixes to keep assets consistent and technically game-ready as they’re handed off from the outsource partner.
• Clearly communicate modeling and paint feedback to the outsource partner, and ensure those creative notes and goals are met. Inform leadership if goals are not being met.
• Communicate and partner with the HS implementation team ensuring outsourced assets are ingested into the pipeline and engine correctly.
• When required, perform some hands-on art production delivering assets for the project, ensuring familiarity and capability working inside of the Epic pipeline.
• Provide bug support, triage, and resolution for any art assets created by the outsourcing team.

Requirements

• Experience in shipping AAA titles across multiple platforms.
• Experience shipping 3D production assets for games in either character, weapon, or prop disciplines.
• Experience in game art asset creation in a variety of software packages including Maya, 3ds Max, ZBrush, Photoshop, Substance, etc.
• Experience in modeling, creating UVs, and texturing is essential.
• Must be highly organized, self-driven, customer-focused, and a great team player.
• Must be a clear and concise communicator, able to deliver complex creative feedback across external vendor locations.
• Experience working within a team and a high-pressure production environment.
• User-focused, passionate, solutions-focused, and innovative.

Preferred Qualifications

• Fluency in languages other than English, including Chinese, German, Spanish, Italian, or Russian.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with 100% premiums paid for both you and your dependents.
• Vision HRA (Health Reimbursement Arrangement).
• Long-term disability and life insurance.
• 401k with competitive company match.
• Robust mental well-being program through Modern Health, offering free therapy and coaching for employees and dependents.
• Unlimited PTO and sick time.
• Company-wide paid breaks and events throughout the year.
• Paid sabbatical for employees with 7 years of employment.