Job Description

We believe in improving peoples lives by making transportation safer more accessible and more convenient. Were 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 its 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

Were 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.

Youll 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 Youll 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 lowlevel shader code where graphs arent sufficient exposing

artistfriendly controls.

Environmental FX (weather water and impacts)

Create environmental FX including weather water interaction (puddles splashes

standing water) debris dust and other largescale 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 largescale 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 LookDev/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 toptier studios or flagship projects (highend 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 realtime or nearrealtime

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 lowlevel 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 highperformance

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 endtoend 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 realworld cameras and

sensors.

Familiarity with raytraced or pathtraced realtime rendering in large environments.

Experience in autonomous vehicles robotics or other safetycritical simulation domains.

About GM

Our vision is a world with Zero Crashes Zero Emissions and Zero Congestion and we embrace the responsibility to lead the change that will make our world better safer and more equitable for all.

Why Join Us

We believe we all must make a choice every day individually and collectively to drive meaningful change through our words our deeds and our culture. Every day we want every employee to feel they belong to one General Motors team.

Benefits Overview

From day one were looking out for your well-beingat work and at homeso you can focus on realizing your ambitions. Learn how GM supports a rewarding career that rewards you personally by visiting Total Rewards resources.

Non-Discrimination and Equal Employment Opportunities (U.S.)

General Motors is committed to being a workplace that is not only free of unlawful discrimination but one that genuinely fosters inclusion and belonging. We strongly believe that providing an inclusive workplace creates an environment in which our employees can thrive and develop better products for our customers.

All employment decisions are made on a non-discriminatory basis without regard to sex race color national origin citizenship status religion age disability pregnancy or maternity status sexual orientation gender identity status as a veteran or protected veteran or any other similarly protected status in accordance with federal state and local laws.

We encourage interested candidates to review the key responsibilities and qualifications for each role and apply for any positions that match their skills and capabilities. Applicants in the recruitment process may be required where applicable to successfully complete a role-related assessment(s) and/or a pre-employment screening prior to beginning employment. To learn more visit How we Hire.

Accommodations

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