Senior Rendering Engineer

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior Rendering Engineer based in the United States. As a Senior Rendering Engineer, you will help shape the visual quality, atmosphere, and performance of ambitious, immersive gaming experiences. You will design, develop, and optimize rendering systems in Unreal Engine 5, working at the intersection of advanced graphics engineering, technical artistry, and game production. From shader development and lighting architecture to GPU profiling and platform optimization, you will influence how complex environments look and perform across target hardware. You will collaborate closely with engineering leadership, technical artists, and environment and lighting artists to balance visual fidelity with performance requirements. The role offers significant technical ownership, allowing you to establish rendering standards, build production tools, and solve challenging graphics problems. You will join a collaborative, multidisciplinary development environment where innovation, experimentation, and high-quality execution are central to creating distinctive gaming experiences. This is a remote opportunity for an experienced graphics engineer who is passionate about pushing the boundaries of real-time rendering.

Rendering Systems Development: Develop, extend, maintain, and optimize Unreal Engine 5 rendering features, including materials, shaders, post-processing effects, lighting systems, and custom rendering passes. Lighting Architecture and Strategy: Define and refine lighting strategies in collaboration with engineering and art teams, evaluating World Partition, GPU Lightmass, Lumen, and baked lighting approaches to achieve the desired visual quality and performance. Graphics Performance Optimization: Profile and optimize GPU and CPU rendering performance against platform-specific frame budgets and visual fidelity targets, identifying bottlenecks and implementing effective solutions. Rendering Debugging and Troubleshooting: Diagnose and resolve rendering defects, visual artifacts, shader issues, and platform-specific graphics problems across supported hardware. Technical Tool Development: Build and maintain internal rendering tools, editor extensions, profiling visualizers, and lighting validation utilities that improve workflows for artists and engineers. Shader and Material Standards: Partner with technical artists to establish shader authoring practices, manage material complexity budgets, and maintain consistent visual quality and performance standards. Rendering Documentation: Develop, maintain, and promote adherence to technical documentation covering rendering architecture, performance expectations, fidelity requirements, and production guidelines. Production Pipeline Integration: Work within established Perforce, Unreal Game Sync (UGS), and Horde workflows, following branching strategies, code review practices, and Definition of Done standards. Emerging Technology Evaluation: Monitor developments in Unreal Engine rendering technologies, including Lumen, Nanite, and Substrate, and assess their suitability for production requirements. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with engineering leads, technical artists, lighting artists, and environment artists to resolve rendering challenges and align technical decisions with creative objectives. Requirements: Professional Experience: At least seven years of professional experience in rendering engineering, graphics programming, or a closely related field, including at least one commercially released title developed with Unreal Engine. C++ Programming: Strong C++ skills and a thorough understanding of Unreal Engine's rendering architecture, including the Render Dependency Graph (RDG), shader compilation, the material system, and deferred rendering. Shader Development: Hands-on experience writing, debugging, and optimizing shaders using HLSL and related graphics programming techniques. Graphics Debugging and Profiling: Experience diagnosing rendering problems and analyzing performance using tools such as RenderDoc and Unreal Insights. Unreal Engine 5 Lighting: Practical experience with UE5 lighting technologies and workflows, including World Partition, GPU Lightmass, and Lumen, with the ability to evaluate trade-offs between dynamic and baked lighting. Performance Engineering: Strong GPU and CPU profiling skills, with a demonstrated ability to identify performance bottlenecks and meet platform-specific rendering budgets without compromising essential visual quality. Production Pipeline Experience: Familiarity with structured development workflows, version control systems such as Perforce, branching strategies, code reviews, and collaboration across multidisciplinary teams. Communication Skills: Ability to explain rendering limitations, technical trade-offs, performance constraints, and optimization strategies clearly to engineers, artists, designers, and other stakeholders. Problem-Solving and Ownership: Strong analytical thinking, attention to detail, initiative, and the ability to independently investigate complex technical challenges while collaborating effectively with the wider team. Preferred Qualifications: Experience implementing and optimizing newer Unreal Engine 5 rendering technologies, including Nanite and Substrate, in a production environment. Previous work on horror games, atmospheric experiences, or visually stylized projects featuring high-contrast lighting and carefully controlled environments. Experience building custom rendering tools, editor extensions, and workflows that improve technical artists' productivity. Experience optimizing rendering for console platforms and supporting platform-specific certification requirements. A technical art background or a history of close collaboration with technical artists on shaders, materials, lighting, and visual quality. Benefits: Competitive Salary: Annual base salary ranges vary by work location: $152,000–$184,000: San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, and the listed Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. $132,000–$160,000: Austin, Denver, Nashville, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and Miami metropolitan areas. $113,000–$136,000: All other U.S. locations. Profit Sharing: Eligibility for a company profit-sharing program. Healthcare Coverage: Medical, dental, and vision insurance for eligible full-time U.S. employees. Retirement Benefits: 401(k) plan with employer matching. Flexible Spending and Health Savings Accounts: Access to FSA and HSA options. Paid Leave: Paid time off, sick time, and paid holidays. Parental Leave: Parental leave benefits for eligible employees. Remote Work Flexibility: Remote work opportunities within the United States, with potential travel to Los Angeles for an in-person interview or occasional meetings. Creative and Technical Ownership: Direct influence over the visual identity, rendering quality, and technical direction of a high-profile gaming franchise. Engineering and Artistic Collaboration: Close partnership with engineering leadership and art direction, supported by a collaborative culture and experienced senior and lead engineers.