Senior Material Artist

Who We Are

Founded in 2023, 2K Sports Lab is the newest stand alone studio at 2K looking to push game development boundaries to bring 2K's next groundbreaking sports franchise to life. We're building a world-class team at our new Vancouver, BC location where our goal is to deliver an exceptional experience through bold ideas, technical excellence, and creative collaboration. We're seeking passionate and driven professionals across all areas of game development to help shape this ambitious vision. If you’re interested in tackling unique challenges and think you have what it takes to level up our team, we encourage you to apply!

What We Need

As a Senior Material Artist at 2K Sports Lab, you’ll be responsible for designing realistic surfaces that breathe life into our worlds. You’ll collaborate closely with Art Leads, Tech Art, Rendering and Lighting to ensure all materials are visually spectacular, optimized, and production-ready within Unreal Engine.

What You’ll Do

• Create realistic and physically accurate tileable materials

• Build, maintain, and document Master Materials and Material Instances in Unreal Engine, with scalability and performance in mind.

• Work with Lead Artists and Art Director to ensure materials match asset needs and visual direction.

• Partner with Tech Art and Rendering to prototype and implement shader effects, including blending, parallax, vertex painting, weathering, and layered materials.

• Help drive and maintain a high standard of visual consistency and quality across all surfaces in the game.

• Optimize textures and shaders for performance and memory budgets on multiple platforms.

• Contribute and maintain a material library across the studio.

What Will Make You a Great Fit:

• 5+ years of material artist experience in the games, film, or animation industry

• Advanced knowledge of Unreal Engine’s Material Editor, including material functions, world-aligned textures, and instance parameters

• Expert in Substance Designer, with a strong understanding of procedural workflows.

• Deep understanding of PBR and how materials respond to different lighting conditions

• Experience collaborating with multiple art departments (Characters, Environments, lighting, and tech art)

• Solid understanding of performance trade-offs and material optimization.

• Familiarity with Megascans, Decal creation, and material blending workflows

• Experience with layered materials for open-world or large-scale environments.

• Previous work in photogrammetry pipelines or texture scanning.

• Passion for realism and attention to fine surface detail

• Fresnel is not just a word to you

Bonus Points:

• Knowledgeable with Unreal Substrate.

• Experience with vertically layered shading models such as OpenPBR.

• Experience writing shaders in HLSL

• Experience shipping games cross-platform

The pay range for this position in British Columbia at the start of employment is expected to be between CAD $96,400 and CAD $142,660 per Year. However, base pay offered is based on market location, and may vary further depending on individualized factors for job candidates, such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and other objective business considerations. Subject to those same considerations, the total compensation package for this position may also include other elements, including a bonus and/or equity awards, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment. If hired, employee will be in an 'at-will position' and the company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation or benefit program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.

As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to ensuring that individuals with disabilities are provided  suitable accommodations to enjoy equal employment opportunities, including the ability to participate in the job application or interview process,. Please contact us if you need an accommodation as part of your application process or otherwise have questions about the Company’s accommodation policy and review process.

Please be aware that 2K does not conduct job interviews or make job offers over third-party messaging apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp, or others.  2K also does not engage in any financial exchanges during the recruitment or onboarding process, and will never ask a candidate for their personal or financial information over an app or other unofficial chat channel.  Any attempt to do so may be the result of a scam or phishing attack, and you should not engage.  2K’s in-house recruitment team will only contact individuals through their official Company email addresses (i.e., via a 2k.com email domain).

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