Principal Environment Artist/ Lead

Job Title: Principal Environment Artist/ Lead

Location: Remote, UK OR Hybrid Lisbon, EU
Reporting to: Game Experience Art Lead

Salary: £45k - £70k per annum/ €53,295 – € 82,748 per annum

Contract: Full time, 6 Month FTC (with possibility to move to permanent)

Company Overview

At Lockwood, our vision is to bring people together through Avakin Life, where players can play, share, and socialize in one of the world's largest and most populous metaverses. Avakin Life provides an immersive 3D life simulation experience for millions of users worldwide.

With a focus on innovation and collaboration, Lockwood offers a flexible and creative environment that empowers our teams to push the boundaries of what’s possible. We provide competitive benefits, including an employee share scheme, making Lockwood an exciting destination for those passionate about shaping the future of digital experiences. This position is available as a fully remote role, though there may be occasional meetups for social interaction and strategic sessions.

Role Summary

As a Principal Environment Artist, you will be responsible for defining and delivering world-class, immersive environments for Avakin Life, while driving artistic quality, technical excellence, and innovation across the environment art discipline. You will lead by example through hands-on creation, mentoring, production planning, and the adoption of AI-assisted workflows. Working closely with Art Direction, Experience Design, Technical Art, and Production, you will help shape the visual identity of the game while improving team workflows, scalability, and efficiency.

Key Responsibilities

Environment Art & Visual Development

• Translate creative briefs into compelling AI-generated visual concepts, enriching the original vision with innovative ideas while remaining aligned to the creative direction.
• Transform briefs, concepts, mood boards, concept art, and AI-generated visual explorations into polished, production-ready 3D environments that support gameplay, narrative, and player experience.
• Create visually stunning and immersive environments for Avakin Life, including interiors, exteriors, landmarks, and interactive spaces.
• Produce high-quality hard surface and organic 3D assets that meet both artistic and technical standards.
• Design and create high-quality textures and materials that achieve a cohesive visual style while remaining optimised for mobile platforms.
• Deliver lighting, simple environment animation, and VFX that enhance mood, atmosphere, and player immersion.
• Optimise environments and assets to achieve excellent performance across supported mobile devices without compromising visual quality.
• Maintain and improve the quality of existing environments through bug fixing, optimisation, and continuous polish.

AI Innovation & Workflow Development

• Champion the integration of AI-assisted workflows across the environment art pipeline, leveraging both proprietary internal tools and external AI technologies.
• Utilise AI tools for ideation, concept generation, image enhancement, texture creation, material generation, lighting exploration, and 3D asset generation to improve production efficiency.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and identify opportunities to enhance quality, speed, and creative exploration.
• Contribute to the development and refinement of internal AI pipelines, implementation standards, and best practices.
• Promote responsible and effective AI adoption across the art team through documentation, knowledge sharing, and mentoring.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Reports to the Lead Environment Artist, acting as a senior creative leader within the Environment Art team, setting quality benchmarks and driving artistic excellence.
• Under the guidance of the Art Director, lead environment ideation sessions, visual exploration, and workflow planning in collaboration with Experience Designers.
• Mentor Environment Artists and Prop Artists through regular feedback, technical guidance, workflow coaching, and AI knowledge sharing.
• Review environment and prop assets, providing constructive feedback to maintain consistent quality across the team.
• Present work to the Art Director in coordination to the Lead Environment Artist, interpret feedback, and guide the team through implementation.
• Develop leadership capabilities to lead the team when needed in the Lead Environment Artist’s absence, gaining valuable experience that may support future progression into the role.
• Collaborate closely with Designers, Technical Artists, Engineers, Producers, and QA to ensure environments support gameplay, technical requirements, and production goals.
• Work effectively with external outsourcing partners by preparing clear briefs, reviewing deliverables, and ensuring outsourced work meets project quality standards.

Production & Delivery

• Support planning and oversight of environment and prop production, helping artists overcome blockers and ensuring timely delivery.
• Break down complex environment tasks into achievable work packages, providing accurate effort estimates and identifying dependencies.
• Prioritise environment work in alignment with production milestones and project objectives.
• Adapt priorities effectively as project scope evolves.
• Provide accurate reporting on progress, risks, blockers, and delivery status to Leads, Art Directors, and Production.
• Contribute actively to creative discussions, planning meetings, and production reviews.

Quality & Testing

• Deliver high-quality, bug-free assets ready for production.
• Identify, troubleshoot, and resolve technical and artistic issues throughout production.
• Apply strong quality control practices to minimise defects and improve asset stability

Requirements

Essential Skills & Experience

• Expert knowledge of 3D environment creation, including both hard surface and organic modelling.
• Strong understanding of colour theory, composition, lighting, scale, and environmental storytelling.
• Excellent low-poly modelling and topology optimisation skills.
• Advanced UV mapping and texture creation experience.
• Strong understanding of mobile optimisation techniques.
• Experience creating lighting setups within Unity.
• Ability to create simple environment animations and visual effects.
• Experience using AI tools for image generation, concept exploration, texture creation, material generation, and 3D asset generation.
• Comfortable working with proprietary tools, scripts, shaders, and internal production pipelines.
• Ability to work effectively from briefs, mood boards, concept art, or AI-generated visual references.
• Excellent time management with the ability to consistently meet production deadlines.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Proven ability to lead environment ideation and visual development from concept through production.
• Experience mentoring artists and helping develop team capability.
• Strong communication and presentation skills, with confidence presenting work to Art Directors and senior stakeholders.
• Ability to provide constructive art reviews and maintain consistent quality standards.
• Experience collaborating across multidisciplinary teams including Design, Technical Art, Engineering, Production, and QA.
• Experience managing relationships with external outsourcing vendors.
• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to balance artistic ambition against technical constraints.
• Passion for sharing knowledge, improving workflows, and driving continuous innovation across the team.

Production & Planning

• Experience planning and overseeing environment and prop production.
• Ability to estimate task complexity, effort, and production timelines accurately.
• Strong understanding of game development production pipelines and milestone planning.
• Comfortable reprioritising work as project requirements evolve.
• Ability to communicate progress, blockers, dependencies, and risks clearly to stakeholders.

Quality Assurance

• Strong understanding of asset validation, testing, and bug prevention.
• Ability to identify and resolve technical issues efficiently.
• Commitment to delivering polished, production-ready content that meets both artistic and technical quality standards.

Desirable Experience

• Experience shipping live service or mobile games.
• Experience working on stylised game environments.
• Experience developing or improving AI-assisted art pipelines.
• Knowledge of procedural content generation tools and workflows.
• Familiarity with performance profiling and optimisation techniques for Unity.
• Experience contributing to studio-wide art standards, documentation, and best practices.

*Please note our initial CV screening may be completed with support from AI

Benefits

At Lockwood, you’ll be part of an inclusive, creative, and highly motivated team. You’ll work on systems used by millions of players, shaping the live game experience and ensuring we can deliver new content and events rapidly and reliably. This is your opportunity to make a real impact—not just on our games, but on the future of how we operate.

• Private Healthcare Plan

• Pension Plan

• Life Assurance

• Work From Home

• Training & Development

• Employee Assistance Programme

*benefits will depend on location and local legislation