World Builder

Core Responsibilities

• Build and assemble high-quality open world environments using Unreal Engine 5, working from greybox through final polish on both landscapes and cityscapes, including doing extensive terrain/landscape sculpting and modification.
• Create and design layouts that support and focus on gameplay, narrative, and intended art direction needs.
• Helping to drive the overall design direction of the world, setting and maintaining a high bar for environmental storytelling, composition, gameplay needs and metrics, and player navigation.
• Collaborate closely with Design, Level Design, Art Direction, and Tech Art to ensure environments support gameplay and storytelling goals.
• Own world-building across large regions, ensuring consistency in composition, tone, and visual storytelling.
• Contribute to the development and evolution of pipelines, workflows, and world-building standards.
• Optimize environments for performance while maintaining visual fidelity.
• Provide feedback on asset quality, modular kits, and world-building tools to improve overall efficiency and cohesion.
• Dress environments using a mix of modular kits, bespoke assets, decals, foliage, and world composition tool.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in level design, world building, or level art for AAA games
• Strong experience working in Unreal Engine (UE4 or UE5), including world-building tools and workflows
• Proven ability at creating layouts and environments, from blockout all the way to polished, shippable quality, with a focus on creating believable immersive gameplay spaces
• Strong eye for composition, scale, materiality, and environmental storytelling
• Experience working with modular kits and large-scale open world pipelines
• Understanding of gameplay considerations in environment construction (navigation, readability, player flow)
• Solid knowledge of performance constraints and optimization practices in real-time environments
• Ability to strongly collaborate across multiple disciplines, while taking ownership of large areas of the world from concepts to shippable quality
• Ability to implement and design changes based on play testing data from both in and out of house data

Plus If...

• Experience with World Partition, Data Layers, or similar large-world systems in UE5
• Familiarity with procedural tools (Houdini, PCG workflows, foliage systems, etc.)
• Experience working on open world or systemic games
• Background in level design or strong design sensibility

Description

Full-time job with benefits. Role is on-site in Santa Monica, CA. The base pay range for this position is $110,000 to $130,000 per year. Actual compensation is based on market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. We also offer a competitive package of benefits including vacation time, sick time, company holidays, parental leave, medical/dental/vision insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, and 401(k) match to regular full-time employees. Certain roles may also be eligible for bonus and equity.