Lantieri went to school in Los Angeles, California with actor-director Ron Howard with the ambition to work in films as a director, which he had been interested in from a young age.
His first collaboration with Steven Spielberg was with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), where he served as a special effects supervisor.
He received his first of five Academy Award nominations with Back to the Future Part II (1989).
In television, he has worked on The Last Tycoon (2016) and Westworld (2016-18) His work on the show earned him (alongside several others) a nomination and ensuing award win for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects in 2017 for the episode "The Bicameral Mind".
Unrelated to effects, Lantieri was also part of the destruction of the Steve Bartman baseball; when Grant DePorter bought the ball in late 2003, he tasked Lantieri to help detonate the ball publicly, which was done on February 26, 2004.