About One Man Studio

We partner with major AAA teams to ship real-time content. Senior, hands-on, fully remote.

The Role

Own the design+art construction of playable spaces from high-fidelity greybox to shipped environments at AAA quality. Co-lead with Level Design to align flow, encounter framing, and readability. Build modular kits and hero set pieces, light for navigation and mood, and keep the level performant and stable in Unreal.

What You’ll Do

End-to-end ownership: Plan, build, and finish one or more levels; accountable for quality, schedule, and performance.
Design x Art co-ownership: Turn beats and intent into layouts that read instantly (circulation, sightlines, cover, callouts).
Kits & set pieces: Author modular kits, trims/atlases, and hero elements; ensure reuse without visual drift.
Lighting for play & mood: Establish exposure/contrast and focal hierarchy; sanity-check materials under production lighting.
Worldbuilding & storytelling: Set dress with purpose—decals, layering, and composition that serve gameplay first.
Performance from day one: Define LOD/HLOD/Nanite strategy, texture/material budgets, and streaming plans; profile and fix.
In-engine integration (Unreal): Validate materials, collisions/lightmaps, world partition/streaming, and simple gameplay hooks.
Standards & mentorship: Maintain the Finishing Bible (naming, metrics, texel density, PPV guardrails); mentor mids; unblock the pod.

Requirements

5+ years in real-time environment/level construction, with at least one shipped AA/AAA owning meaningful spaces.
Proven level building: circulation, volumetrics, encounter framing, callouts, and composition that guides players.
Strong in Maya/Blender/Max and Substance 3D; reliable retopo/UV/bake fundamentals and disciplined texel density.
Proficient in Unreal Engine: materials/master instances, collisions/lightmaps, LODs/HLODs, world partition/streaming.
Modular mindset and budget discipline; you plan for performance, you don’t “fix it later.”
Clear, direct communicator; effective in a remote, multi-time-zone team.

Nice to Have

Houdini for scatter/kit generation/terrain utilities.
Photogrammetry cleanup; baking-to-tilers workflows.
Experience aligning Lighting/VFX/Audio to reinforce readability.

Portfolio

Show final, game-ready levels (or major spaces) with succinct breakdowns: layout/greybox → kit & set-piece builds, wireframes, map sets, texel density notes, LOD/HLOD strategy, and in-engine captures under production lighting (close/mid/wide). If we can’t see process and results, we can’t assess.

What Success Looks Like

First-pass approvals from design and art leadership.
Readable, performant spaces with minimal late rework.
Kits and set pieces that speed the pod without quality drift.

Senior Level Architect