Principal Lighting Artist

Ghost Story Games • Massachusetts, USA, MA

7h • $130,900 - $170,120 • Remote

About The Position

Ghost Story Games is seeking a remote Principal Lighting Artist to help maintain the technical and aesthetic quality of lighting in Judas. Working closely with Creative and Art Direction, Design, and Technology, the artist will help create a beautiful, cohesive gameplay experience from beginning to end. The role includes developing the game’s distinctive, dramatic lighting style while preserving credibility and consistency through a physically plausible balance of exposure, illumination, and emissive intensities.

The Principal Lighting Artist will help raise lighting quality across the project, troubleshoot execution and scalability, and identify opportunities to improve the lighting pipeline, tools, quality, efficiency, and performance. The role also calls for mentoring other Lighting Artists, sharing expertise, and supporting effective cross-functional collaboration across the studio.

Requirements

• Established experience in the game industry as a Senior to Principal Lighting Artist; experience on larger, complex productions is preferred.
• Extensive experience lighting real-time gameplay, including crafting scenes and using lighting compositions to guide players through traversal and combat and communicate emotions aligned with the story.
• Expert eye for value, color, composition, and visual hierarchy, including focus direction and small-medium-large shape balance.
• Proficient artistic and technical experience with Unreal Engine; Unreal Engine 4 is preferred.
• Technical experience balancing game-wide illumination and emissive standards for adaptive exposure and HDR.
• Familiarity with performance evaluation and optimization, and experience working with Engineering and Technical Art to establish best practices.
• Proactive problem-solving and cross-department collaboration skills, including the ability to pitch creative, visual, technical, and process improvements.
• For the Principal level, experience and mindfulness regarding individual and team efficiency, and demonstrated ability to independently handle ambiguous, challenging cross-functional tasks.
• Ability to share expertise, mentor colleagues, and contribute positively across teams.

Nice To Haves

• Passion for deeply narrative-driven games, particularly first-person shooters.
• Traditional art, lighting, or cinematography background.
• Experience collaborating effectively with diverse internal and distributed teams.

Responsibilities

• Help drive the visual and technical quality bar for lighting and troubleshoot execution and scalability across the broader lighting team.
• Diagnose and validate targeted refinements to Judas’s lighting pipeline and custom tools, collaborating with Art Leadership, Tools and Graphics Engineering, and Technical Art to identify quality, efficiency, and performance improvements.
• Maintain high aesthetic and technical standards in individual work and identify and pitch visual or technical improvements across the project to project leadership.
• Create real-time environmental and character lighting that supports traversal, combat, player focus, and the story’s intended emotions.
• Help ensure consistent lighting standards for illumination, emissive intensities, adaptive exposure, and HDR across the game.
• Collaborate across departments and help maintain best-practice examples for the lighting team.
• Mentor and support other Lighting Artists and model proactive, supportive collaboration across studio departments.

Benefits

• The total compensation package for employees in regular roles may include a bonus and/or equity awards, in addition to medical, financial, and other benefits.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed