Lighting & Technical Artist
About The Position
IronSpark is seeking a Lighting & Technical Artist for a contract role based in person at its Birmingham, Alabama studio. The role combines artistic and technical work to shape the atmosphere, mood, and visual identity of games and films. The artist will use Unreal Engine to create dynamic lighting, post-processing pipelines, and particle effects that support gameplay and narrative storytelling across stylized and realistic visual styles. The position collaborates with art directors, designers, and programmers to deliver visually compelling work while maintaining gameplay readability, visual consistency, and real-time performance. Contract options are available for 3, 6, or 12 months, with up to 40 hours per week. The studio describes the daily work environment as flexible. Compensation is an hourly rate proportionate to experience.
Requirements
- 3–5 years of professional experience in game development, animation, or real-time virtual production, specializing in lighting and/or visual effects.
- Expert proficiency in Unreal Engine, including Niagara, material authoring, dynamic and baked lighting, Sequencer, and Movie Render Queue.
- Experience with complementary DCC tools such as Maya, Houdini, Photoshop, or Substance Designer for asset and particle-texture creation.
- Versatility across art styles and a strong grasp of color theory, shape language, mood, composition, cinematic lighting, and shot composition for stylized and realistic aesthetics.
- A portfolio or reel demonstrating real-time lighting, atmospheric design, and visual effects in Unreal Engine.
- Understanding of real-time optimization constraints and high-quality offline and cinematic rendering pipelines.
- Ability to work independently, manage project priorities, and adapt to changing creative direction.
- Excellent communication skills, a team-first mindset, and comfort giving and receiving creative critique.
- Professionalism, discretion, and strict confidentiality regarding unreleased client and internal projects.
Responsibilities
- Create and implement Unreal Engine lighting setups, volumetrics, color grading, and post-processing for mood, composition, and narrative clarity across different art styles.
- Design, author, and integrate real-time visual effects using Niagara, custom material shaders, and particle systems for environments, gameplay, and cinematics.
- Collaborate with art directors, designers, and programmers to align lighting and visual effects with artistic direction, gameplay readability, and visual consistency.
- Prototype stylized lighting approaches, custom shader effects, and visual-effects concepts to address creative and technical challenges early in development.
- Profile, optimize, and debug lighting and particle systems for real-time performance and cinematic rendering.
- Manage deliverables, estimate task timelines, and meet project milestones.
- Participate in creative reviews, incorporate feedback, and provide creative and technical solutions across the pipeline.
- Share knowledge and contribute to a collaborative studio environment.
Benefits
- Opportunity to build processes, tools, and culture from the ground floor.
- Direct access to founders and Subject Matter Experts.
- Opportunity to influence the product, processes, and company decisions.
- Broad cross-functional exposure.
- Opportunities to learn through solving new problems.
- Low-bureaucracy decision-making.
- Room to experiment using a try, learn, and adjust approach.
- Flexible hours or schedule.
- Remote or hybrid options are listed among the benefits.
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What This Job Offers
Career Level
Mid Level
Education Level
No Education Listed
