Technical Artist Jobs in California

About Palatial

Palatial builds the first fully automated robotics data generation platform. Robotics companies and AI labs need enormous volumes of physically accurate, simulation-ready 3D worlds to train on, and today that content is made by hand, slowly, at a fraction of the scale the industry needs. We turn that into an automated pipeline. We launched recently, are backed by top tier investors, and already work with some of the biggest names in physical AI.

Why this role exists

Palatial needs a Blender-first technical artist who can make excellent 3D assets and carry them through the first mile of robot simulation. Modeling judgment, topology, materials, procedural asset creation and production quality are central. Isaac Sim is a required working tool for importing, checking and validating assets, but this role does not require building physics solvers, training robot policies or doing controls research.

What you'll own

• Model and refine high-quality assets from photographs, scans, CAD, video or AI-generated starting points, including hard-surface products, tools, furniture, articulated mechanisms and selected environments.
• Build clean, reusable production assets in Blender or an equivalent DCC, including topology, UVs, PBR materials, part separation, naming, hierarchy and presentation-quality previews.
• Use Geometry Nodes, Modifiers, Houdini, Grasshopper, Blender Python or equivalent tools to make procedural and parametric assets, reusable generators and repeatable production workflows.
• Bring assets into Isaac Sim and validate the basics: units, scale, coordinate frames, materials, pivots, articulation, collision geometry and simple drop, contact or motion checks.
• Use Python and AI-assisted tools to automate repetitive modeling, import, cleanup and validation work, with a human review step for topology, proportions, materials, colliders and physical behavior.
• Define asset standards, review work from collaborators or vendors, document the workflow and coordinate with the US evaluation and engineering teams.

What we're looking for

• Strong hands-on 3D art fundamentals. The candidate can model complex hard-surface objects from reference, make sound topology and proportions decisions, create clean UVs and materials, and organize assets for downstream use.
• A portfolio that shows the candidate's own work, including wireframes, topology, process or node graphs. Render-only portfolios are not enough. Blender is strongly preferred, but strong Maya, 3ds Max, Houdini, Rhino or equivalent experience can transfer.
• Hands-on Isaac Sim experience. The candidate has personally imported, configured and run assets or scenes, and understands enough USD and simulation setup to check scale, hierarchy, colliders, materials, pivots and basic joints. This is a practical user requirement, not a solver-engineering requirement.
• Procedural and technical-art instincts. The candidate has used Geometry Nodes, Houdini, Grasshopper, Blender Python or another DCC API to make reusable generators, tools or batch workflows.
• Practical physics literacy. The candidate understands at a working level what mass, inertia, friction, collision geometry, joints, constraints and contact settings do, and can distinguish an asset problem from a simulator problem.
• Clear spoken and written English, strong ownership and reliable production judgment. Candidates who need OPT, STEM OPT or H-1B sponsorship are welcome, subject to individual eligibility and counsel.

Bonus

• Experience with soft bodies, cloth, cables, thin sheets, articulated mechanisms or contact-heavy robot tasks.
• Experience with USD, URDF, MJCF, MuJoCo, Newton, Genesis, PhysX, Omniverse, real-to-sim reconstruction, 3DGS or benchmark scenes.
• Experience with AI 3D generation, LLM-assisted scripting, DCC plugins, MCP or agent-driven workflows, with clear human quality control.
• Experience with Unreal or Unity, shaders, C++, VEX, Houdini HDK, vendor training, asset standards or customer-facing technical delivery.

Pay: $120,000.00 - $175,000.00 per year

Work Location: Hybrid remote in San Francisco, CA 94107