Principal Environment Artist​/Lead

Job Title:
Principal Environment Artist/ Lead

Location: Remote, UK OR Hybrid Lisbon, EU
Reporting to: Director of Art

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.

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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Act 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…