Open World Lead Artist (UE5)

📍 Location: Greater London Area (Guildford or London, UK) – Hybrid / On-site preferred / Open to Fully Remote depending on experience

🕓 Experience: 5+ years in environment art, world building, lighting, or art direction for AAA or large-scale open worlds

🎯 Projects: At least 1 shipped AAA or high-fidelity open-world title, or equivalent experience creating Unreal-driven worlds at scale

Hypersonic Labs is seeking a hands-on Open World Lead Artist to define, build, and guide the visual identity of our large scale open world being developed for HELIX , our next generation moddable sandbox platform.

This role blends art direction, environment art / world building skills, and strong understanding and utilisation of optimal UE5 workflows.

You will shape the visual tone, establish the artistic bar inside Unreal Engine 5, and lead the execution of large open-world environments built using a combination of procedural and hand-crafted workflows. You’ll work closely with our technical artists, rendering/optimisation engineers, and environment team, plus collaborate with external partners to ensure our open world meets a high visual and performance bar.

While Art Direction skills would be very useful on this role, we are predominantly looking for someone who "lives" inside the engine; lighting scenes, building optimised materials, assembling spaces, and demonstrating best-in-class workflows the team can follow.

• Define the overall visual identity, mood, lighting language, and presentation style for Pacifica and our broader HELIX aesthetic.
• Build UE5 scene mockups, visual targets, and benchmark environments that communicate the quality bar to internal and external teams.
• Conduct regular in-engine reviews, giving actionable feedback to ensure consistency, quality, and cohesive visual storytelling across the world.
• Create and maintain style guides, biome sheets, visual breakdowns, and documentation for environment artists and external partners.

• Build in-engine environments using Nanite assets, Quixel/photogrammetry sources, procedural scattering, and custom asset libraries.
• Create lighting setups (dynamic + baked where relevant), atmospheric effects, post-process pipelines, and colour-grading profiles.
• Author high-quality materials and shaders, with an emphasis on UEFN-style constraints (material complexity, texel density, memory budgets).
• Own the quality and consistency of modular kits, foliage libraries, and world-building assets.

• Partner with tech art and engineering to ensure all art content is performance conscious : efficient materials, LOD standards, HLOD strategy, streaming budgets, and world partition organisation.
• Guide artists in building content that scales—visually and technically—across a very large, persistent multiplayer map.
• Use procedural generation tools (UE5 PCG, blueprint utilities, in-house tools, or external plugins) to build large areas quickly while preserving artistic intent.
• Collaborate with our rendering and optimisation engineers on lighting, shading, memory usage, and rendering performance.

• Mentor and guide environment artists to develop their craft, improve workflows, and maintain consistency.
• Work closely with design, tech art, world building, and engineering to ensure all disciplines align toward the visual vision.
• Help plan and review asset pipelines, ensuring smooth integration between internal teams and external contractors.
• Be an in-engine thought leader: demonstrate exemplary scene building, optimisation strategies, and iteration best practices.

• 5+ years professional experience in environment art, lighting, art direction, or world building for AAA or large-scale games.
• Strong hands-on experience in Unreal Engine 5 , including lighting, materials, world building, Nanite workflows, and World Partition.
• A killer portfolio demonstrating in-engine visuals, not just concept art (similar standard to the reference portfolios provided).
• Proven ability to take an open-world space from initial blockout to polished, shippable quality.
• Excellent understanding of texel density, material budgets, shader optimisation, LODs, HLOD, instancing, and memory-saving strategies.
• Experience with photogrammetry / Quixel assets and the ability to blend procedural + bespoke art workflows.
• Demonstrated ability to harmonise high-end aesthetics with strict performance constraints—ideally in multiplayer or large-scale contexts.
• Leadership and mentorship skills; able to elevate a team’s craft through clear direction and hands-on examples.

• Experience with UE5 PCG, Houdini, World Machine, Gaea, or other procedural world-building tools.
• Prior work with UGC ecosystems (UEFN, Roblox, etc.) and understanding of creator-friendly limitations.
• Knowledge of real-time rendering constraints for large-scale multiplayer worlds.
• Comfort collaborating with technical artists and rendering engineers on optimisation passes.
• Experience in cinematic lighting, environmental storytelling, or stylised realism.
• Ability to evaluate external partner deliverables and uphold visual standards.

Hypersonic Labs is building HELIX —a next-generation UGC platform where creators can build GTA-like multiplayer experiences with AAA-quality tools. We’re a 25-person startup backed by top gaming VCs, currently in pre-alpha, and working on one of the most ambitious sandbox projects in the industry.

You’ll influence the visual identity of one of the largest open worlds ever attempted by a small studio—shaping a pipeline that merges procedural generation, artistic craft, and leading-edge UE5 technology.

If you’re excited to create breath taking open worlds, love working hands-on in Unreal, and want to drive the artistic vision of a platform built for millions of creators—this is the role for you.