Senior / Staff Technical Artist u2013 Materials, ...

Job Description We believe in improving peopleu2019s lives by making transportation safer, more accessible, and more convenient. Weu2019re building advanced software and simulation technology to power autonomous vehicles that safely connect people to the places, things, and experiences they care about. We seek and embrace diversity in all of its forms. We continuously push ourselves to think differently and take ownership wherever it's needed. This is a place for dreamers and doers to succeed. If you share our passion for achieving what some say is impossible, join us. The Role Weu2019re looking for a Senior / Staff Technical Artist who sits at the intersection of materials, lighting, and procedural environment generation. Youu2019ll define practical workflows and tools that let artists author highu2011quality, performant content, and youu2019ll partner with rendering, ML, and perception teams to make sure it behaves as expected in our AV stack. What You'll Do + Material & shading pipeline + Design and maintain a physicallyu2011based material pipeline for our simulation engines (e.g., MDL, shader graphs, or equivalent). + Author and calibrate highu2011quality shaders and materials that respond correctly under a wide range of lighting conditions and camera models. + Standardize material libraries, authoring conventions, and validation workflows to keep content consistent and performant. + Lighting & rendering + Define best practices for environment and hero lighting in simulation scenes, including sky/atmospherics, timeu2011ofu2011day setups, and camerau2011accurate exposure. + Build inu2011engine lighting tools and evaluation scenes to help artists quickly assess quality, realism, and performance. + Partner with rendering engineers to profile lighting and shading, and to ship optimizations that reduce cost without sacrificing critical visual cues. + Procedural environment generation & placement + Build procedural systems to populate largeu2011scale environments with buildings, vegetation, traffic control devices, road debris, and other set dressing. + Develop procedural tools and workflows for generating layouts (streets, landscaping, prop distributions) that respect design, performance, and simulation constraints. + Collaborate with worldbuilding and content teams to encode art direction and AV testing needs into controllable procedural parameters. + Cross-functional collaboration + Partner with Simulation, ML, and Perception teams to understand what u201crealismu201d means from a sensor and modelu2011performance perspective, and tune your work accordingly. + Document standards, share best practices, and mentor other artists and technical artists on shading, lighting, and procedural workflows. Your Skills & Abilities + Experience + 5+ years (Senior) or 8+ years (Staff) experience as a Technical Artist, Technical Director, or similar hybrid role in games, VFX, animation, or simulation. + A strong reel or portfolio demonstrating materials/shading, lighting, and procedural environment work, with clear notes on your personal contribution. + Materials & lighting + Deep understanding of physicallyu2011based rendering (PBR), BRDFs, texture workflows, and how to author materials that hold up under varied lighting and exposure. + Production experience building or maintaining lighting pipelines in a realu2011time or nearu2011realu2011time engine (Unreal, Unity, proprietary, etc.), including performance profiling and optimization. + Familiarity with authoring shaders in MDL, HLSL/GLSL, shader graphs, or similar systems. + Procedural workflows + 3+ years working with Houdini or equivalent procedural tools to generate environments, layouts, or set dressing at scale. + Solid 3D math fundamentals and comfort expressing them in node graphs and code (e.g., for scattering, LOD rules, masking, and terrainu2011aware placement). + Tools & engineering skills + Strong Python skills for building pipeline tools, exporters, validators, and DCC integrations; experience with PySide/PyQt or similar UI frameworks is a plus. + Experience integrating DCC tools (Maya, Houdini, Substance, etc.) with game/simulation engines and asset management systems. + Ability to profile and debug performance issues related to materials, lighting, and environment complexity, and to communicate findings clearly to both artists and engineers. + Mindset + Comfortable owning problems endu2011tou2011endu2014from talking to artists, to sketching designs, to shipping tools, to iterating based on feedback. + Strong communication skills and a track record of bridging art and engineering, especially when priorities conflict or tradeu2011offs are required. What Will Give You A Competitive Edge + Experience building FX / VFX such as atmospherics, weather, particles, decals, or postu2011processing that interact well with your lighting and material pipelines. + Experience with USD and/or MDL in production pipelines. + Background generating synthetic data for machine learning or perception, or calibrating content to match realu2011world cameras, sensors, or photogrammetry captures. + Familiarity with rayu2011traced or pathu2011traced realu2011time rendering, and techniques for keeping such content scalable in a large simulation environment. + Experience working in autonomous vehicles, robotics, or other safetyu2011critical simulation domains. Compensation The compensation information is a good faith estimate only. It is based on what a successful applicant might be paid in accordance with applicable state laws. The compensation may not be representative for positions located outside of the California Bay Area. + The salary range for this role is $153,200 and $234,100 . The actual base salary a successful candidate will be offered within this range will vary based on factors relevant to the position. + Bonus Potential: An incentivepayprogram offers payouts based on company performance, job level, and individual performance. Benefits + Benefits: GM offers a variety of health and wellbeing benefit programs.Benefit options include medical, dental, vision, Health Savings Account, Flexible Spending Accounts, retirement savings plan, sickness and accident benefits, life insurance, paid vacation & holidays, tuitionassistanceprograms, employeeassistanceprogram, GM vehicle discounts and more. GM does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. Do not apply for this role if you will need GM immigration sponsorship now or in the future. This includes direct company sponsorship, entry of GM as the immigration employer of record on a government form, and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (e.g., H1-B, OPT, STEM OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc). About GM Our vision is a world with Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions and Zero Congestion and we embrace the responsibility to lead the change that will make our world better, safer and more equitable for all. Why Join Us We believe we all must make a choice every day u2013 individually and collectively u2013 to drive meaningful change through our words, our deeds and our culture. Every day, we want every employee to feel they belong to one General Motors team. Benefits Overview From day one, we're looking out for your well-beingu2013at work and at homeu2013so you can focus on realizing your ambitions. Learn how GM supports a rewarding career that rewards you personally by visiting Total Rewards resources (. Non-Discrimination and Equal Employment Opportunities (U.S.) General Motors is committed to being a workplace that is not only free of unlawful discrimination, but one that genuinely fosters inclusion and belonging. We strongly believe that providing an inclusive workplace creates an environment in which our employees can thrive and develop better products for our customers. All employment decisions are made on a non-discriminatory basis without regard to sex, race, color, national origin, citizenship status, religion, age, disability, pregnancy or maternity status, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a veteran or protected veteran, or any other similarly protected status in accordance with federal, state and local laws. We encourage interested candidates to review the key responsibilities and qualifications for each role and apply for any positions that match their skills and capabilities. Applicants in the recruitment process may be required, where applicable, to successfully complete a role-related assessment(s) and/or a pre-employment screening prior to beginning employment. To learn more, visit How we Hire (. Accommodations General Motors offers opportunities to all job seekers including individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation to assist with your job search or application for employment, email () us or call us at 1-800-865-7580. In your email, please include a description of the specific accommodation you are requesting as well as the job title and requisition number of the position for which you are applying. We are leading the change to make our world better, safer and more equitable for all through our actions and how we behave. Learn more about: Our Company ( Our Culture How we hireu200bu200bu200bu200bu200bu200bu200b ( Our diverse team of employees bring their collective passion for engineering, technology and design to deliver on our vision of a world with Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions and Zero Congestion. We are looking for adventure-seekers and imaginative thought leaders to help us transform mobility. Explore our global locations ( We are determined to lead change for the world through technology, ingenuity and harnessing the creativity of our diverse team. Join us to help lead the change that will make our world better, safer and more equitable for all by becoming a member of GMu2019s Talent Community () (. As a part of our Talent Community, you will receive updates about GM, open roles, career insights and more. Please note that filling out the form below will not add you to our Talent Community automatically; you will need to use the link above. If you are seeking to apply to a specific role, we encourage you to click u201cApply Nowu201d on the job posting of interest.The policy of General Motors is to extend opportunities to qualified applicants and employees on an equal basis regardless of an individual's age, race, color, sex, religion, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression or veteran status. Additionally, General Motors is committed to being an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and offers opportunities to all job seekers including individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation to assist with your job search or application for employment, email us at .In your email, please include a description of the specific accommodation you are requesting as well as the job title and requisition number of the position for which you are applying.

Created: 2026-03-07