Real-Time 3D Asset Engineer

Description

Do you love creating accurate and compelling real-time 3D assets from reference?

Are you an artist who can generate and optimize 3D models for real-time engines, and use code to streamline or expand the asset pipeline?

If so, we’re looking for someone like you to join our team at APL.

We are seeking a Real-Time 3D Asset Engineer with technical art skills to help us create modern training systems, compelling visual tools, and real-time content pipelines for critical national security challenges. You’ll join a multidisciplinary team that creates interactive training and visualization tools grounded in real-world form, function, and engineering detail. In this role, you’ll pair production-art judgment with the technical curiosity to build tools, write shaders, and solve pipeline problems.

• Your primary responsibility will be to create, optimize, and integrate real-time 3D assets, materials, and scenes for training systems, engineering visualizations, interactive tools, and mission-focused applications.
• You will build production-ready models, textures, and materials from reference photos, CAD, 3D scans, photogrammetry, engineering drawings, and other source material, with an emphasis on equipment, environments, facilities, and other hard-surface assets.
• You will optimize 3D assets for real-time performance, including polycount, draw calls, texture memory, levels of detail, colliders, materials, and scene organization.
• You will develop and maintain source-to-engine asset pipelines that help artists and engineers move content from reference material and 3D tools into Unity, Unreal, or other real-time engines.
• You will create tools, scripts, shaders, import/export workflows, and asset-processing utilities that streamline real-time content production.
• You will work with artists, engineers, and software developers to troubleshoot asset, rendering, shader, lighting, source control, and build issues across production pipelines.
• You will help shape practical technical art standards for reference gathering, asset quality, visual accuracy, optimization, source control, and repeatable workflows.

Qualifications

• Have a bachelor’s degree in game art, technical art, digital art, computer graphics, game development, engineering, architecture, a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Have 3+ years of professional experience creating real-time 3D art for games, AR/VR, training systems, engineering visualization, simulation, or other interactive applications.
• Have a portfolio, demo reel, or project examples that show finished 3D models, textures, materials, or scenes based on real-world source material.
• Have experience with 3D content tools and real-time engine workflows, such as Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, Houdini, Substance tools, Unity, Unreal Engine, proprietary game engines, or similar tools.
• Have used scripting, shader authoring, or programming to solve technical art problems, streamline workflows, improve materials, process assets, or support real-time content production.
• Are able to obtain an Interim Secret level security clearance by your start date and can ultimately obtain Secret level clearance. If selected, you will be subject to a government security clearance investigation and must meet the requirements for access to classified information. Eligibility requirements include U.S. citizenship.

You’ll go above and beyond our minimum requirements if you…

• Have experience as a technical artist, environment artist, hard-surface artist, material artist, real-time 3D artist, or in a related capacity on shipped games, AAA productions, training systems, simulations, or real-time visualization products.
• Have experience writing shaders, tools, plugins, asset processors, or pipeline automation with HLSL, Slang, C++, C#, Python, Java, or similar languages.
• Have experience with or interest in, 3D reconstruction, scan cleanup, CAD conversion, computer vision, image processing, procedural workflows, or real-world asset capture.
• Have experience optimizing meshes, textures, materials, shaders, lighting, memory use, draw calls, load times, or frame rate for real-time applications.
• Have…