Senior / Staff Technical Artist – Materials, Lighting & Procedural Environments

Descripción

We believe in improving people’s lives by making transportation safer, more accessible, and more convenient. We’re building advanced software and simulation technology to power autonomous vehicles that safely connect people to the places, things, and experiences they care about.

We seek and embrace diversity in all of its forms. We continuously push ourselves to think differently and take ownership wherever it's needed. This is a place for dreamers and doers to succeed. If you share our passion for achieving what some say is impossible, join us.

The Role

We’re looking for a Senior Technical Artist – Materials, Shading & FX to help build the virtual worlds our AV stack learns from.

You will own the physically based material and FX pipeline for our simulation engines: designing procedural shaders, authoring photorealistic materials, building a scalable material library, and creating weather and water FX that behave realistically at city scale. Procedural environment experience is a plus, especially if combined with strong C++ skills.

You’ll partner closely with content, rendering, simulation, and perception teams to ensure our worlds both look real and behave consistently for sensors and ML models.

What You'll Do

Material & shading pipeline

·       Own the PBR material pipeline for our simulation engines (e.g., MDL, MaterialX, shader

graphs, or equivalent).

·       Design procedural material and shader systems that generate families of related

materials (roads, terrain, vehicles, props) from controlled parameters.

·       Author and calibrate photorealistic materials that remain physically plausible across

different cameras, exposure settings, and scenarios.

·       Build and maintain a material library for our virtual world, including standards for naming,

parameter ranges.

·       Profile and optimize shaders for performance in large, complex scenes.

·       Implement and maintain low‑level shader code where graphs aren’t sufficient, exposing

artist‑friendly controls.

Environmental FX (weather, water, and impacts)

·       Create environmental FX including weather, water interaction (puddles, splashes,

standing water), debris, dust, and other large‑scale events.

·       Use simulation and procedural techniques for placement and behavior of FX, including

accumulation and interaction with the environment and vehicles.

·       Author FX shaders and materials (particles, volumes) that integrate cleanly with the core

shading pipeline.

Procedural environments (bonus)

·       Build or extend procedural systems to populate large‑scale environments (roads, terrain,

foliage, props) while respecting performance and simulation constraints.

·       Leverage industry standard DCC tools or write code/plugins where necessary to solve

simulation needs.

Collaboration & tools

·       Partner with Simulation, ML, and Perception teams to align materials and FX with sensor

models and evaluation metrics.

·       Work with rendering and tools engineers to profile, debug, and optimize materials and

FX.

·       Share standards, build example scenes, and mentor artists and technical artists on PBR

and FX workflows.

·       (Bonus) Use C++ and/or Python to extend engine features, add custom

nodes/operators, or integrate procedural environment systems.

Your Skills & Abilities

Experience

·       5+ years (Senior) or 8+ years (Staff) as a Technical Artist, FX TD, Look‑Dev/Materials

TD, or similar hybrid role in games, VFX, animation, virtual production, or simulation.

·       A strong reel/portfolio focused on materials/shading and FX, with clear notes on your

personal contributions.

·       Experience on top‑tier studios or flagship projects (high‑end VFX/animation, AAA

games, virtual production, or similar).

Materials & shading

·       Deep understanding of physically based rendering (PBR), BRDFs, and texture

workflows, and how to keep materials physically plausible.

·       Proven experience owning a material/shader pipeline in a real‑time or near‑real‑time

engine (Unreal, Unity, proprietary, etc.).

·       Strong skills in procedural material authoring (e.g., Substance Designer, MaterialX, MDL,

custom node graphs).

·       Comfort with both shader graphs and low‑level shader code, including debugging and

performance tuning.

FX / VFX

·       Production experience building weather and environmental FX (rain, snow, hail, fog,

water surfaces, spray, etc.).

·       Experience simulating or procedurally generating FX and integrating them into a

game/simulation engine.

·       A track record of making FX and materials work together (wetness, accumulation,

interaction with motion and environment).

Tools & mindset

·       Strong Python skills for pipeline tools, exporters, validators, and DCC integrations;

PySide/PyQt is a plus.

·       (Bonus) C++ experience extending engines or implementing high‑performance

procedural or environment systems.

·       (Bonus) Experience with procedural environment generation and placement systems in a

game, VFX, or simulation pipeline.

·       Ability to profile and diagnose performance issues around materials, shaders, FX, and

environment complexity, and communicate findings to both artists and engineers.

·       Comfortable owning problems end‑to‑end and bridging art and engineering when

priorities or constraints conflict.

What Will Give You A Competitive Edge

·       Experience with USD and/or MDL in production pipelines.

·       Background generating synthetic data or calibrating content to real‑world cameras and

sensors.

·       Familiarity with ray‑traced or path‑traced real‑time rendering in large environments.

·       Experience in autonomous vehicles, robotics, or other safety‑critical simulation domains.

GM does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. Do not apply for this role if you will need GM immigration sponsorship now or in the future. This includes direct company sponsorship, entry of GM as the immigration employer of record on a government form, and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (e.g., H1-B, OPT, STEM OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc.)

Información sobre diversidad

General Motors se compromete a ser un lugar de trabajo en el cual no solo no haya discriminación indebida, sino que fomente con sinceridad la inclusión y el sentido de pertenencia. Creemos firmemente que la diversidad del personal crea un entorno en el cual nuestros empleados pueden prosperar y desarrollar mejores productos para nuestros clientes. Instamos a los candidatos interesados a que revisen las responsabilidades y aptitudes clave para cada puesto y se postulen para los puestos que coincidan con sus habilidades y capacidades. Es posible que, cuando corresponda, se les pida a los solicitantes que están en el proceso de contratación que completen satisfactoriamente una o más evaluaciones relacionadas con su función y/o una evaluación previa al empleo antes de comenzar a trabajar.  Para obtener más información, visite Cómo contratamos.

Declaración de igualdad de oportunidades en el empleo (EE.UU.)

General Motors se enorgullece de ser un empleador que ofrece igualdad de oportunidades.  Todos los solicitantes calificados serán tenidos en cuenta para el empleo sin distinción de raza, color, religión, sexo, orientación sexual, identidad de género, nacionalidad, discapacidad o condición de veterano protegido. 

Adecuaciones (EE.UU. y Canadá)

General Motors ofrece oportunidades a todos los solicitantes de empleo, incluyendo las personas con discapacidades. Si necesita una adecuación razonable para ayudarle con su búsqueda o solicitud de empleo, envíenos un correo electrónico a [email protected] o llámenos al 800-865-7580. En su correo electrónico, incluya una descripción del puesto específico que está solicitando, así como el título del empleo y el número de solicitud del puesto que está solicitando.