Example Company
Software engineer
- Location
- San Francisco
- Type
- Full time
- Compensation
- $150k-$200k
- Posted
- 2 days ago
Join a team building useful software. Work closely with engineering and design to turn new ideas into products.
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Sr. 3D Generalist, UX
- Compensation
- USD 142,100–195,360 (Base Pay Range (Annual))
- Posted
- 2D AGO
About the role
About Lucid
At Lucid, we are creating exceptional mobility experiences through innovation to drive the world forward. Built on Lucid’s proprietary technology and software-defined vehicle architecture, our award-winning vehicles bring our “Compromise Nothing™” approach to the global automotive market. That means refusing to choose between performance and sustainability, design and engineering, ambition and integrity. In Lucid Air and Lucid Gravity, we have designed and built vehicles that have redefined their segments, combining exceptional range, performance, design, and expansive space in a single experience.
We achieve this through deep vertical integration, with design, engineering, and production happening in-house across our global offices and manufacturing facilities. Our teams come from industries around the world, united by a shared commitment to excellence. By refusing to settle, you can help redefine what’s possible and shape the future of mobility.
The Role
We are looking for a Senior 3D Technical Artist & Motion Designer to join the Lucid UX/UI team and help define the next generation of digital vehicle experiences.
This role sits at the intersection of 3D design, motion, real-time rendering, and product development. You will create high-quality vehicle visualizations, real-time 3D assets, animations, and motion experiences for customer-facing applications while ensuring that content performs efficiently within demanding embedded compute environments.
You will work closely with UX/UI Designers, Vehicle Designers, Engineering, Product, Marketing, and other cross-functional partners to establish both the visual quality and the production processes required to bring sophisticated 3D experiences into production.
The ideal candidate combines a strong visual eye with deep technical fluency. You should be equally comfortable refining lighting and materials in a 3D scene, rigging and animating a vehicle, optimizing an asset for a constrained GPU target, collaborating with engineers on implementation, and using emerging AI tools to accelerate and improve the creative workflow.
What You'll Do
Real-Time 3D & Visualization
- Create high-quality real-time 3D vehicle models, renderings, environments, and visual experiences for customer-facing UX applications.
- Develop and maintain real-time content using Unreal Engine or comparable real-time 3D engines.
- Build production-quality content in Cinema 4D, including modeling, materials, lighting, cameras, animation, and rendering.
- Create and optimize materials, textures, lighting, shaders, geometry, LODs, and other 3D assets for real-time applications.
- Establish lighting and rendering approaches that maintain a premium visual character across a range of display and compute configurations.
- Rig and animate vehicles, vehicle components, cameras, and other objects required for interactive product experiences.
- Produce polished motion graphics and animated 3D sequences that communicate system states, vehicle behaviors, transitions, and product functionality.
Production & Optimization
- Prepare and optimize 3D assets for resource-constrained production compute targets, balancing visual fidelity, frame rate, memory, loading performance, thermal considerations, and system limitations.
- Develop scalable asset pipelines that allow complex vehicle geometry and design data to be transformed into production-ready real-time assets.
- Work with engineering teams to identify performance bottlenecks and determine appropriate trade-offs between visual quality, geometry complexity, texture resolution, lighting, effects, and runtime performance.
- Define standards and best practices for asset creation, naming, organization, versioning, optimization, and delivery.
- Support the integration and validation of visual assets throughout development and production.
Motion & Experience Design
- Work with UX and interaction designers to translate experience concepts into sophisticated motion behaviors, transitions, visual states, and 3D interactions.
- Support design concept ideation and rapid prototyping by translating early UX concepts into compelling 3D visualizations, motion studies, and interactive prototypes that help teams explore, evaluate, and communicate new vehicle experiences.
- Develop prototypes that allow teams to evaluate motion, timing, camera behavior, lighting, materials, and real-time interactions before committing them to production.
- Help establish a coherent motion and 3D visual language across vehicle interfaces and related digital experiences.
AI-Enabled Creative Workflows
- Use AI-assisted creative tools as part of the day-to-day design and production workflow for ideation, visualization, asset development, iteration, and optimization.
- Explore emerging generative AI and machine-learning-based workflows that can shorten the path from concept to production-quality 3D content.
- Help establish responsible, repeatable workflows that combine traditional 3D production techniques with new AI capabilities.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Partner closely with UX/UI Design, Vehicle Design, Engineering, Product, and other stakeholders from early concept development through production.
- Manage the flow of 3D assets and requirements between design and engineering teams.
- Translate creative objectives into technically achievable solutions and clearly communicate technical constraints back to designers and stakeholders.
- Participate in design reviews and technical reviews, presenting work and explaining visual and technical trade-offs.
- Help establish processes that enable design and engineering teams to work efficiently with complex vehicle and 3D data.
What You'll Bring
- 5–8+ years of professional experience developing and shipping high-quality 3D content for customer-facing digital products.
- Demonstrated experience shipping real-time 3D content on resource-constrained compute platforms, such as automotive, embedded systems, mobile devices, game consoles, AR/VR devices, or comparable environments.
- Advanced experience with Unreal Engine or a comparable real-time 3D engine.
- Strong professional experience with Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects, including the development of high-quality 3D, animation, and motion-graphics content.
- Expert understanding of real-time 3D fundamentals, including modeling and topology; UVs and texturing; PBR materials and shading; lighting; rigging; animation; cameras and composition; LOD and geometry optimization; texture and memory optimization; and real-time rendering performance.
- Strong motion-design sensibility, including timing, easing, transitions, choreography, and visual storytelling.
- Experience developing sophisticated vehicle, product, or hard-surface visualization is highly desirable.
- Ability to work with high-complexity source assets and transform them into efficient, production-ready real-time content.
- Experience collaborating directly with software and graphics engineers to diagnose and resolve performance or rendering issues.
- Fluency with contemporary AI-assisted creative tools and workflows, coupled with curiosity about how generative AI will change 3D and motion production.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across creative and technical disciplines.
- A portfolio demonstrating both exceptional visual craft and technical execution, including examples of shipped real-time 3D and motion content.
Nice to Have
- Experience developing automotive HMI, digital cockpit, ADAS visualization, navigation, charging, or vehicle-state experiences.
- Experience working with vehicle CAD and converting engineering/design geometry into optimized real-time assets.
- Experience with shader development, procedural materials, particle systems, or other real-time visual-effects workflows.
- Familiarity with tools such as Houdini, Blender, Maya, Substance 3D, or comparable 3D content-creation applications.
- Familiarity with scripting or pipeline automation using Python or similar technologies.
- Experience developing content for embedded GPUs or other environments where GPU, CPU, memory, bandwidth, and thermal constraints directly influence design decisions.
- Experience building reusable tools, templates, or pipelines that enable designers to produce and iterate on real-time content more efficiently.
What Success Looks Like
You will help create a production pipeline where ambitious 3D UX concepts can move efficiently from vehicle design data to creative exploration, real-time prototype, optimized production asset, and shipped customer experience.
Success means not simply producing beautiful renders. It means ensuring that the final experience retains its visual intent when running reliably on production hardware, while building a collaborative process that allows UX, Design, and Engineering to iterate quickly.
At Lucid, we don’t just welcome diversity - we celebrate it! Lucid Motors is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and expression, marital status, and any other characteristic protected under applicable State or Federal laws and regulations. Salary Range: The compensation range for this position is specific to the locations listed below and is the range Lucid reasonably and in good faith expects to pay for the position taking into account the wide variety of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions, including job-related knowledge; skillset; experience, education and training; certifications; and other relevant business and organizational factors. Base Pay Range (Annual)$142,100—$195,360 USDCompensation & Benefits: Lucid offers a comprehensive and competitive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance; life and disability coverage; paid time off; paid holidays, paid sick leave; and a 401(k) retirement plan. Hourly/non-exempt employees accrue up to 120 hours paid time off, and salaried/exempt employee accrue up to 160 hours paid time off. Eligible employees may also participate in Lucid’s equity program and/or a discretionary annual cash incentive program. Incentive and equity awards, if applicable, are determined based on individual performance, role scope, market considerations, and overall company results, in accordance with the terms of the applicable plans.
Equal Opportunity: At Lucid, we believe diversity strengthens everything we build. Lucid Motors is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and is committed to providing an inclusive workplace for all. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable state or federal laws and regulations.
Accessibility: Lucid Motors is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you need any accommodation to participate in the application process, please contact us at TA-Operations <@> lucidmotors.com. This email address is designated solely for accommodation requests and is not monitored for job applications or resume submissions. To be considered for employment, all applications must be submitted through the Lucid Motors Careers website.
Candidate Data Privacy: By submitting your application, you understand and agree that your personal data will be processed in accordance with our Candidate Privacy Notice.
To all recruitment agencies: Lucid Motors does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to Lucid Motors. Lucid Motors is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.
