Potential Career Paths within Epic Games (Unreal Engine)

I wanted to research the potential job roles which are associated with this project, so I can think about potential career paths, and how they are related to my project and exploration.

Epic Games Careers

There are many different areas you can start a career in with Epic Games, such as:

Art

“Push your artistic talent to the limit on a team of world-class environment, character and concept artists who strive to innovate and inspire.”

Epic Games feature available job openings on their website, in the art department, this could include roles such as UI Art Director, FX Artist, Senior Texture Artist, Virtual Production Technical Artist, etc.

Engineering 

“Unreal-powered projects have been on the bleeding edge of real-time entertainment for over 20 years and our constantly growing team of engineering experts are always improving on the tools and technology that empower content developers worldwide.”

Some job roles include Tools Programmer, Gameplay Programmer / Programmeur Gameplay, Lead Platform Programmer, QA Management, and many more. These are jobs that are available in the engineering department.

Production

“Whether it’s driving a vision from start to finish or collaborating with teams to inspire and deliver projects of Epic quality, Epic’s production teams take pride in consistently delivering world-class products and experiences.”

Jobe roles in the production department include roles such as Game / Technical Producer, Mobile Capture Lead, Service Delivery Manager, etc.

Design

“Put your design skills to work at a cutting-edge company that challenges the norm. From character and level design to competitive, gameplay and system design, help shape the future of interactive entertainment at Epic.”

For the design team, some of the job roles featured on the website include Senior Level UI Programmer, UX Designer, Creative Director, etc.

Publishing 

“From customer service and community management to marketing, localization and video production, Epic’s publishing teams take great pride in producing world-class content and experiences that impact our global community.”

Including roles such as Director, Publishing, Associate Producer, Publishing, Senior Support Engineer.

Business/ Operations

“Help Epic thrive on our business operations team with essential roles in HR/Recruiting, Legal, Facilities, IT, InfoSec and more.”
This includes roles such as Education Lead, Product Manager, Data Scientist, Contracts Coordinator, etc.
The Unreal Engine also has a job page on their website:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/got-skills-looking-for-talent/job-offerings
From what I have learned so far about Unreal, I found that I prefer the creative aspects of the engine, therefore I would look more into the Art and Design departments within Epic Games/ Unreal.
Local and larger companies also hire Unreal artists from websites such as Indeed, Job Search, etc. As well as posting vacancies online and on job forum websites and advertising on their own websites.
Responsibilities of an Unreal Engine Artist 
I found an example of a job advert for an Unreal Engine Artist and used this as a real-life reference for the responsibilities for this role:
  • Create, manage, and optimize 3D assets (organic, environments, hard surface, and more) in UE that meet the high performance requirements of VR applications for multiple projects simultaneously.
  • Work with Discipline Leads and developers to determine new techniques for the VR production pipeline.
  • Suggest and create tools and shaders in Unreal Engine to build a more efficient pipeline.
  • Create PBR Textures, clean object topology, UV’s and materials using Photoshop, Quixel Suite, Maya, Unreal Engine.
  • Rework geometry and textures of existing assets.
  • Integrate 3D assets (animation/content) into a master sequence and UE.
  • Set up and optimize lighting UE.
Conclusion

From this, I have learned that there is a lot I must learn within Unreal, as well as external software such as Photoshop, Maya and Quixel. This suggests that I should look into expanding my knowledge and skills to look into these pieces of software in more detail.

Looking into Maya will be beneficial for me, as it means I am able to create my own 3D assets for my projects, as well as gaining the knowledge and skill which makes me more employable.

As a student, this is the best time for me to do so, as I have free access to the software and free time to work on projects, as well as using this project next year as an opportunity to improve my professional portfolio so that I stand out to employers.

 

 

March 30, 2020

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