Principal Lighting Artist

Giant Skull • Los Angeles, CA

120d • $160,000 - $210,000

About The Position

As a Principal Lighting Artist, you will help define and drive the lighting vision for our game - from visual tone and mood to player guidance and readability. Your work will shape how players experience the world in our games, through atmosphere, color, contrast, and emotion. You’ll collaborate closely across disciplines to deliver high-quality real-time lighting that brings the beauty and immersion of our game environments to life.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience as a lighting artist for games.
• Portfolio showcasing ability to produce compelling visuals through lighting, with experience in lighting environments, characters, and cinematics.
• Deep understanding of lighting principles, composition, color theory, and the emotional impact of light and shadow.
• Highly skilled in lighting within game engines such as Unreal, including dynamic lighting, post-process effects, Lumen, and optimization strategies.
• Experience lighting a wide variety of spaces from intimate interiors to expansive exteriors, from gameplay-driven areas to narrative moments.
• Ability to balance artistic goals with gameplay and technical constraints, ensuring lighting supports player readability, navigational flow, and real-time performance.
• Highly collaborative, able to partner with design, narrative, tech art, and engineering to align lighting with gameplay and worldbuilding.
• Proactive problem solver who brings clarity to ambiguous challenges and proposes solutions grounded in both creative vision and production reality.
• Valued feedback, mentorship, and helping others grow.
• Experience contributing to lighting tools, pipeline development, or helping define lighting tone from early IP development is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Establish and execute the lighting quality bar and vision, creating dramatic, immersive, and intentional lighting across environments, characters, and gameplay moments.
• Collaborate closely with art direction, level design, and narrative to shape mood, guide players, and support storytelling through lighting.
• Contribute to the development of lighting workflows and tools, partnering with engineering and tech art to support efficiency and visual quality.
• Ensure performance targets are met while achieving high-quality real-time lighting in UE5.
• Mentor and support other artists, providing constructive feedback and technical insight to elevate the overall bar for lighting.
• Influence the art department, helping shape both the look of the world and the processes used to build it.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation.
• Access to cutting-edge technology and resources.
• Opportunities for career growth, personal and professional development.
• Remote or hybrid work options.
• Open PTO.
• Support for balancing work and personal life.
• Opportunities for bonuses and retirement plan matching.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior