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

Description

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.)

Renseignements sur la diversité

General Motors est résolue à être un lieu de travail qui est non seulement exempt de discrimination illégale, mais aussi un endroit qui favorise véritablement l'inclusion et l'appartenance. Nous sommes convaincus que la diversité de la main-d'œuvre permet de créer un environnement dans lequel nos employés peuvent s'épanouir et développer de meilleurs produits pour nos clients. Nous encourageons les candidats intéressés à consulter les principales responsabilités et compétences requises pour chaque rôle et à postuler à tout poste qui leur correspond. Dans le cadre du processus de recrutement, les candidats peuvent devoir, le cas échéant, réussir une évaluation liée au poste ou une présélection d'emploi avant d'être embauchés.  Pour en savoir plus, consultez notre processus de recrutement.

Déclaration concernant l'égalité d'accès à l'emploi (É.-U.)

General Motors est fière d'être un employeur souscrivant au principe de l'égalité d'accès à l'emploi.  Tous les candidats qualifiés seront pris en compte, sans égard à la race, à la couleur, à la religion, au sexe, à l'orientation sexuelle, à l'identité de genre, à l'origine ethnique, aux situations de handicap ou au statut protégé d'ancien combattant. 

Aménagements (É.-U. et Canada)

General Motors offre des occasions à tous les chercheurs d'emploi, y compris les personnes handicapées. Si vous avez besoin d'un accommodement raisonnable pour vous aider dans votre recherche d'emploi ou la soumission de votre candidature, envoyez-nous un courriel à l'adresse [email protected] ou appelez-nous au 800 865-7580. Veuillez inclure dans votre courriel une description spécifique du type d'accommodement demandé, ainsi que le titre d'emploi et le numéro de demande du poste auquel vous postulez.