3D Lead

This retainer position is for 30 hours per week over a 3-month period, with the potential to extend. Our aim is to establish a long-term relationship. Our core collaboration hours are 9am-3pm Pacific Time, Monday to Thursday.

**The Role**

You’ll work closely with the Head of Animation, Production Managers, and project teams to create, oversee, and deliver high-quality 3D visuals for cultural, museum, and interactive experiences.

In this role, you’ll split your time between hands-on creative work and leadership — driving look development, modeling, texturing, lighting, and asset animation while also guiding in-house and freelance artists, while ensuring consistency across projects. Armed with a strong network of collaborators to draw upon, you possess a sharp creative eye and the ability to calmly anticipate technical and production challenges and tackle them head on.

You are creative with a deep understanding of composition, sequencing, and cinematic storytelling. You are fluent in 3D production techniques, pipelines, and workflows across Maya/Blender, Substance, and Unreal. You are confident in animating props, cameras, and environmental elements, and you bring a strong sense of timing and composition to your work.

You can take projects from concept art or design briefs through to polished, optimized delivery — while shaping the creative approach and guiding others along the way. You thrive in collaboration, contribute confidently in discussions, and balance high-fidelity visuals with the practical needs of production and budget constraints. You’re comfortable troubleshooting issues, mentoring peers, and representing the animation team in cross-disciplinary meetings. This is an opportunity to combine leadership, technical craft, and creativity while shaping high-impact visual narratives.

**About ngx**

ngx is a creative technology studio. We partner with clients to reimagine what’s possible in physical and digital spaces. Focused on people and fueled by collaboration, we activate storytelling, art, and technology to inspire and engage. We combine technical expertise, interpretive skill, and creativity to elevate the visitor experience. We push the possibilities of new technologies to create experiences that are vivid and meaningful.

**Key Responsibilities**
- Take ownership of complex sequences, environments, and assets from concept through to final delivery, ensuring technical accuracy and creative polish.
- Balance hands-on creative work with team supervision and mentorship — guiding juniors and/or freelancers, providing feedback, and ensuring quality standards across the department.
- Collaborate closely with the Head of Animation, producers, and developers to shape the creative approach, solve production challenges, and maintain consistency across projects.
- Contribute to look development, lighting, shading, and asset animation (props, cameras, environmental elements) that support narrative and visual storytelling.
- Provide constructive, actionable feedback in reviews; elevate the work of peers and juniors through mentorship and knowledge-sharing.
- Anticipate technical or creative issues in the pipeline, propose solutions, and support workflow improvements across the team.
- Represent the Animation/3D department in cross-discipline meetings, offering insight into visual quality, storytelling, and production feasibility.
- Uphold studio conventions and help refine best practices for file organization, naming standards, optimization, and asset handoff.
- Participate in client presentations at project milestones.
- Contribute your skills and knowledge - we thrive on collaboration and learning
- This role reports to the Head of Animation.

**Desired Experience and Skills**
- 5+ years of professional 3D production experience in environments, props, or look development for real-time or pre-rendered projects.
- A portfolio that reflects your skills, range, and experience level.
- Proven leadership skills from an animation or VFX studio or running a freelance business.
- Adept at building and maintaining a network ofartists to work with on projects.
- Advanced proficiency in Maya, Blender, or equivalent — able to model, texture, and light with efficiency and polish.
- Strong knowledge of Substance Painter (Designer a bonus) for material creation and texturing workflows.
- Proven experience with lighting, rendering, and lookdev in both DCC tools and real-time engines (Unreal, Unity is a bonus).
- Confident with asset animation (props, cameras, environmental elements), with a strong grasp of timing, spacing, composition, and cinematic storytelling.
- Comfortable setting up and troubleshooting asset pipelines, file formats (FBX, ABC, USD), and cross-software workflows.
- Strong creative eye for composition, scale, and detail — able to balance fidelity with optimization for project needs.
- Experience mentoring and supporting junior/mid-level artists, providing feedback and guiding their growth.
- Clear