Principal Technical Artist, Games R&D - Tech Lab

Principal Technical Artist, Games R&D - Tech Lab

USA - Remote

At Netflix, our mission is to entertain the world. Together, we are writing the next episode - pushing the boundaries of storytelling, global fandom and making the unimaginable a reality. We are a dream team obsessed with the uncomfortable excitement of discovering what happens when you merge creativity, intuition and cutting-edge technology. Come be a part of what's next.

The Game Studio Tech Lab team is a small, dynamic team. We build focused, creative games to validate and steer Netflix's emerging technology investments that will make Netflix an amazing destination for games of all kinds. These unique projects will be a mix of demonstrating and inspiring what's possible with these new technologies and services while working directly with partner teams to help ensure an excellent developer experience that enables developers to focus on the fun.

The R&D Team Games Principal Technical Artist will be on a small, senior-leaning team of multi-talented game engineers, designers and artists. This is a jack-of-all-trades Principal technical artist role with a creative and artistic focus, balanced by deep expertise in performance and technical optimization. This team will make smaller, experimental games with opportunities to work with and steer emerging new technologies — often on constrained, early, or unproven platforms where optimization is critical to proving what's possible.

Responsibilities

• Performance and technical optimization: Drive runtime and memory performance across CPU, GPU, and bandwidth budgets. Profile, diagnose, and resolve bottlenecks in rendering, shaders, animation, asset streaming, and content pipelines. Establish budgets, benchmarks, and best practices that make our games run beautifully on emerging and constrained platforms.
• Visual development and prototyping: Identify and prototype new opportunities to incorporate technology and unlock new creative opportunities. Comfortable with shifting or in-progress technologies and platforms, and distilling art-related technical constraints and opportunities from them, and their ramifications on pipeline, performance, and visual assets.
• Games development and prototyping: Make fun, interactive game experiences of a variety of types across a variety of technologies (potentially including different engines), in a fast-paced, iterative environment — with a constant eye toward what will and won't hold up under real performance constraints.
• Pipeline and tooling: Architect and maintain art pipelines, tools, and automation that keep content optimized by default and allow a small team to punch well above its weight.
• Creative/Artistic: Create game assets — textures, models, shaders, and effects — that can ship in a real game with a high degree of technical capability and optimization.

Requirements

• 10+ years experience as a technical artist shipping multiple AAA, casual, or mobile games, with a track record of senior-level technical leadership
• Deep expertise in performance optimization across rendering, shaders, memory, draw calls, overdraw, LODs, texture/mesh budgets, and asset pipelines
• Fluency with profiling and debugging tools (e.g., RenderDoc, PIX, Nsight, Xcode/Instruments, Unity Profiler, Unreal Insights) and the ability to read GPU captures and frame timings to drive concrete improvements
• Strong art skills with experience and a deep understanding of topics such as 3D graphics, VFX, modeling, shaders, texturing, and lighting for games
• Demonstrated experience building games for early, unfinished, or heavily constrained platforms where optimization directly enables the creative vision
• Exceptional communication and cross-discipline collaboration skills, including the ability to mentor engineers and artists on performance-minded content authoring
• Deep familiarity with multiple game engine technologies such as Unity3D and Unreal Engine, including their rendering pipelines and performance characteristics
• Expertise in content creation and tool development in DCC tools, such as Maya, Photoshop, Substance, Houdini, etc.
• Passion for making video games, especially in a rapid, focused, smaller form vs. multi-year investments

Bonus Skills

• Strong coding/scripting expertise, such as C#, Lua, Python, C++, etc., with the ability to write and optimize shaders (HLSL/GLSL/ShaderLab) and engine-side tooling
• Experience writing or heavily modifying custom render features, post-process effects, or compute shaders
• Experience working successfully with art outsourcing, including establishing technical specs and review processes that protect performance targets

Location

• LG/LA/Remote

Generally, our compensation structure consists solely of an annual salary; we do not have bonuses. You choose each year how much of your compensation you want in salary versus stock options. To determine your personal top of market compensation, we rely on market indicators and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience to determine your compensation in the market range. The range for this role is $310,000.00 - $520,000.00. This compensation range will vary based on location.

Netflix provides comprehensive benefits including Health Plans, Mental Health support, a 401(k) Retirement Plan with employer match, Stock Option Program, Disability Programs, Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts, Family-forming benefits, and Life and Serious Injury Benefits. We also offer paid leave of absence programs. Full-time hourly employees accrue 35 days annually for paid time off to be used for vacation, holidays, and sick paid time off. Full-time salaried employees are immediately entitled to flexible time off.

Inclusion is a Netflix value and we strive to host a meaningful interview experience for all candidates. If you want an accommodation/adjustment for a disability or any other reason during the hiring process, please send a request to your recruiting partner.

We are an equal-opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that diversity builds stronger teams. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

Job is open for no less than 7 days and will be removed when the position is filled.