Senior Environment Artist

Senior Environment ArtistLocation: Remote-first

Type: Full-time

Start: ASAP

About Couch Heroes

At Couch Heroes, we’re exploring new ground for the MMO genre. In a world where fantasy and ancient technology intertwine, players explore shattered realms, grapple across verticality, solve puzzles, and push back corruption, with progression driven by player expression and discovery. We envision bridging generations of gamers, creating a space where both coexist and journey together. We’re developing in Unreal Engine, in early production, with a team spanning multiple countries.

We’re remote-first, based in the UK, and scaling to support a multi-year live-service roadmap. We value autonomy, curiosity, and collaborative ownership, and we’re looking for creators who want to help build something from the ground up. Sound like your kind of thing? We should talk.

About the Job

How a world looks, feels, and reads to players as they move through it is shaped by environment art. We need a Senior Environment Artist who can take blocked-out zones and points of interest and turn them into rich, grounded, and visually cohesive spaces that support exploration, combat, social gathering, and storytelling across a persistent open world.

You will report to the Lead 3D Environment Artist and work closely with Level Design, Tech Art, Lighting, and Narrative to ensure that our zones, hubs, and points of interest progress smoothly through the full production pipeline. You will also collaborate with the Art Director to maintain visual consistency and push quality across the world.

We are in early production. The studio has been running for three years, but the environment art pipeline is still maturing. Modular kits, material standards, set dressing workflows, and handoff processes between level design and environment art are being built and refined right now. You will be contributing to those standards, not just following them. The decisions you make about how to construct and dress spaces will influence the production approach the team uses for years to come.

This is a hands-on production role, not a management position. But we need someone who can operate with independence, provide thoughtful feedback to other artists, and contribute to pipeline and process discussions as the team grows.

Your RoleEnvironment Production and World Building

• Own the art production of assigned zones, hubs, and points of interest from blockout handoff through to final polish, under the guidance of the Environment Art Lead and Art Director.
• Translate level design blockouts into fully realised 3D environments inside Unreal Engine 5, interpreting spatial intent and adding visual depth, narrative texture, and atmospheric detail.
• Build modular architectural kits that support scalability, reuse, and production efficiency across multiple zones and biomes. Design kits with variation in mind so that reuse does not read as repetition.
• Create environment assets including props, trim sheets, tiled textures, decals, and supporting materials aligned with project art direction and technical constraints.
• Apply purposeful set dressing that reinforces the narrative context, history, and functional logic of each space. Dressing should tell a story about who was here, what happened, and what the space is for.
• Establish strong visual hierarchy, focal points, and gameplay readability through thoughtful composition, ensuring that art supports navigation, combat clarity, and exploration rewards.

Collaboration and Pipeline

• Work closely with Level Design to maintain gameplay clarity and navigational flow. Art should enhance the design intent, not obscure it.
• Collaborate with Tech Art and Engineering to resolve optimisation issues including draw calls, memory usage, shader efficiency, and streaming performance in a persistent online world.
• Coordinate with Lighting and VFX to ensure environments read correctly under final lighting conditions and that atmospheric effects integrate cleanly with world geometry.
• Work with Narrative and Quest Design to understand the story context of each space and ensure visual storytelling aligns with authored and emergent content.
• Provide constructive, specific feedback to mid and junior artists during environment reviews. Help raise the quality bar while keeping critique actionable and encouraging.
• Maintain clean naming conventions, asset structure, folder organisation, and documentation standards. A scalable MMO pipeline depends on discipline at the file level.

Technical Awareness

• Build with the technical realities of a persistent MMO in mind: player density, zone streaming and World Partition boundaries, LOD budgets, instancing strategies, and content built for long-term expansion.
• Work within Nanite and Virtual Texture workflows, understanding their strengths and limitations for real-time open world environments at scale.
• Proactively flag performance risks in dense areas before they become blockers, and work with Tech Art to find solutions that preserve visual quality within budget.

Must-Haves

• 6+ years of experience in game development, with at least one shipped title in an environment art or world-building role.
• Strong experience building 3D environments for RPGs, MMOs, or open-world games, with a portfolio that demonstrates spatial composition, material variety, and environmental storytelling.
• Proven expertise in modular workflows and kit-based world construction, including practical experience designing kits that balance visual variety with production efficiency.
• Proficiency in Unreal Engine 5, including working knowledge of material editors, landscape tools, and asset integration pipelines.
• Strong experience with Maya, Blender, or 3ds Max for environment modelling and asset creation.
• Solid understanding of PBR workflows using Substance Painter, Substance Designer, or equivalent tools.
• Experience optimising assets for real-time performance: LODs, instancing, draw call management, and memory budgets.
• Strong understanding of how lighting, colour, and value drive mood, readability, and player guidance in game environments.
• Ability to take high-level art direction, break down tasks independently, and deliver complete, production-ready environments with minimal oversight.
• Strong communication skills and a collaborative working style, with comfort giving and receiving honest feedback.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience working on MMOs or large-scale multiplayer environments, with an understanding of shared-space design, zone streaming, and content built for long-term expansion.
• Experience with Nanite workflows and Virtual Texture systems for high-fidelity real-time environments.
• Familiarity with procedural tools such as Houdini or Unreal PCG systems for scattering, placement, or terrain generation.
• Exposure to World Partition and large-scale streaming workflows in Unreal Engine.
• Experience with terrain sculpting and landscape tools inside Unreal Engine, including heightmaps, landscape materials, biome blending, and terrain optimisation.
• Experience working within stylised art directions and production workflows: non-photoreal materials, controlled value ranges, shader-driven accents, and hand-authored detail over scan reliance.
• Experience collaborating directly with lighting and VFX teams to bring environments to final polish.

About You

• You take ownership of the spaces you build. When you hand off an environment, it’s complete, considered, and ready for the next discipline to build on.
• You understand how art supports gameplay, not just visual appeal. You think about sightlines, readability, pacing, and player flow as much as material quality and prop density.
• You can balance density and clarity in open world spaces. You know when a space needs more detail and when restraint serves the player better.
• You respond well to feedback and iterate quickly. Early production means direction will evolve, and you see that as part of the process, not a disruption to it.
• You are comfortable working through ambiguity. Not everything is defined yet, and you see that as an opportunity to help shape the right answer.
• You care about clean pipeline execution and long-term scalability. You build things properly because you know the team will be building on your work for years.
• You work autonomously in a remote environment, proactively keeping your lead and collaborators informed without needing to be chased.

Couch Heroes have partnered with Skillsearch on this hire. Jack is leading the search directly with the studio leadership, so feel free to reach out to him at jb@skillsearch.com. He will be your point of contact throughout. Looking forward to connecting!

Equal Opportunities

Couch Heroes is an equal opportunities employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and do not discriminate on the basis of age, disability, gender identity or expression, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, or any other protected characteristic.

Privacy and data

We process your personal data as part of the recruitment process. Couch Heroes and Skillsearch both act as data controllers in relation to your application. For details on how your information is collected, used, stored, and your rights under UK GDPR, please review the relevant Privacy Policies below:

Couch Heroes: https://couch-heroes.com/privacy-policy/

Skillsearch: https://www.skillsearch.com/privacy#policy