Senior 3D Generalist, Product Visualization

About the role

Skydio is seeking a Senior 3D Generalist to join the Brand Creative team on a three-month contract to directly support flagship annual user conference content and critical product launch initiatives. The successful candidate will own the end-to-end creation of high-fidelity product imagery, from engineered CAD data through final visual polish, ensuring absolute fidelity to Skydio's hardware design intent. You will be responsible for translating complex technical specifications into photorealistic visuals that communicate product capabilities to diverse audiences, including enterprise, public safety, and defense sectors. This role requires a self-driven generalist who can fluidly move between tasks, balancing artistic quality with strict production timelines and brand standards. You will partner deeply with engineering, product marketing, and cross-functional teams to ensure that every visual asset accurately represents the innovation and precision of Skydio's autonomous flight technology. The position demands expertise in both offline rendering quality and real-time asset optimization to meet varied distribution needs. You will be expected to troubleshoot technical challenges in geometry, materials, and lighting to solve creative problems without direct supervision. Ultimately, this role is about owning the visual story of Skydio's products in the most compelling and accurate way possible.

Key facts

What you'll do

Create highly photorealistic product renderings, illustrations, and animations for keynote presentations, product launches, marketing campaigns, web experiences, decks, manuals, and other brand communications.

Work from engineering and industrial-design CAD models to create production-ready visualization assets in Blender.

Prepare complex CAD-derived geometry through tessellation, topology cleanup, normal correction, mesh organization, material separation, UV creation, and scene optimization.

Preserve the accuracy, construction, proportions, materials, and fit and finish of Skydio hardware throughout the visualization process.

Build realistic, physically based materials using Blender and Adobe Substance 3D Painter.

Create studio-quality lighting that accurately communicates product form, surface finish, scale, and industrial-design details.

Produce both clean studio imagery and environmental or conceptual scenes showing Skydio products in use.

Create product animations that demonstrate assembly, operation, movement, workflows, features, and product interactions.

Composite and finish rendered imagery primarily in Adobe Photoshop, with occasional motion graphics and compositing work in Adobe After Effects.

Adapt product assets for multiple output formats, resolutions, aspect ratios, and campaign needs.

Prepare optimized real-time 3D assets for interactive product viewers, web experiences, and augmented-reity applications.

Export and validate assets in formats such as glTF and GLB for implementation in three.js and related browser-based experiences.

Optimize real-time assets through efficient topology, UV layouts, texture atlases, baked maps, level-of-detail strategies, texture compression, and thoughtful polygon and material budgets.

Maintain organized scenes, materials, textures, naming conventions, and file structures that can be shared and reused across the broader creative team.

Collaborate closely with creative leadership, incorporate feedback quickly, and deliver polished work on compressed production timelines.

Requirements

A portfolio demonstrating exceptional photorealistic visualization of consumer electronics, industrial products, automotive products, robotics, or other hard-surface products.

Advanced proficiency in Blender, including modeling, scene organization, shading, lighting, rendering, and animation.

Strong experience creating realistic high-detail materials in Adobe Substance 3D Painter.

Expertise in lighting, rendering, and camera workflows in Blender to achieve studio-quality results.

Solid understanding of topology, retopology, and UV mapping for production visualization workflows.

Proficiency with Adobe Photoshop for final compositing, color correction, and asset preparation.

Experience optimizing 3D assets for real-time engines and web-based visualization platforms.

Strong attention to detail and a commitment to preserving the accuracy of mechanical design, proportions, and construction.

Ability to manage multiple priorities and meet tight deadlines in a fast-paced production environment.

Practical notes

This is a three-month contract role with a start date aligned with project needs.

Work authorization is required for employment in the United States.

Skydio does not offer employment-based work permits or visa sponsorship for this role.

Candidates must be eligible to work in the United States without sponsorship.

Location flexibility is noted as U.S. Remote or hybrid/onsite at our HQ in San Mateo, California.

Hours are not specified beyond standard full-time expectations for the duration of the contract.

The role reports to the Senior 3D Art Director and Creative Director within the Brand Creative organization.

Collaboration with engineers, product marketers, and cross-functional partners is a central part of the workflow.

Deliverables must serve both high-stakes keynote presentations and ongoing marketing campaigns.

Asset optimization for real-time platforms is a critical requirement for many deliverables.

Final imagery and animations will be used across web, print, and digital campaign channels.

Scene organization and naming conventions must support team collaboration and reuse.

The successful candidate will demonstrate the ability to translate technical CAD data into visually compelling, production-ready content under tight timelines.