Principal Technical VFX Artist New

Epic Games is hiring a Principal Technical VFX Artist to join the Rocket League team in Cary, North Carolina. This role sits inside the FX department of a live-service game production, responsible for owning end-to-end VFX systems across gameplay, cosmetics, and arena environments. It suits a senior-level technical FX artist who has shipped multiple titles and is as comfortable profiling GPU performance as they are setting the visual quality bar for a team.

About the Role

The Principal Technical VFX Artist works within Tech Art and Engineering pipelines to design, build, and maintain real-time effects systems that hold up across a long-running live-service production schedule. Day-to-day work includes authoring Niagara effects, writing shaders, validating new VFX workflows in Unreal Engine, and reviewing the team’s output against an established quality standard. This is not a pure execution role, the person in this seat is expected to shape how effects work is done across the entire production.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and build reusable, scalable VFX systems that support rapid iteration across gameplay, cosmetic, and arena production tracks.
• Author real-time particle and shader effects in Unreal Engine’s Niagara system, covering a range from physically grounded to high-energy stylized looks.
• Work directly with Engineering to define and meet GPU performance budgets, including draw call limits, particle costs, and memory targets.
• Prototype and validate new VFX pipeline workflows, documenting solutions so the broader team can adopt them consistently.
• Set and communicate the quality standard for effects work on the project, reviewing and giving notes across disciplines.
• Mentor junior and mid-level FX artists, improving both the floor and ceiling of the team’s output through direct feedback and shared tooling.

What You Bring

• A shipped real-time FX portfolio with credits on multiple released titles in the game industry.
• Deep proficiency with Niagara and Unreal Engine’s material system, including shader authoring in HLSL or the Material Editor.
• Scripting ability in Python, Blueprint, or an equivalent language used in a real-time VFX pipeline context.
• Demonstrated track record of optimizing particle and GPU performance without compromising the final look.
• Experience on a live-service game production is strongly preferred.
• Houdini experience is a plus for artists who work from simulation reference.

Why This Role

Epic Games has built and maintained Unreal Engine as a standard across both game development and a growing range of film and television VFX pipelines, which means the systems work done here carries influence well beyond a single title. Rocket League is a long-running live-service production with a large active player base, which provides consistent production volume and real creative constraints to solve against. Epic covers 100% of medical, dental, and vision premiums for employees and dependents, offers unlimited PTO, and includes a paid sabbatical at seven years of tenure.

Apply now for the Principal Technical VFX Artist position at Epic Games and bring your real-time effects experience to a production team that builds at scale.