Senior II Lighting Artist – Unannounced Game | Irvine, CA or Albany, NY

Activision Blizzard • Irvine, CA

22h • Hybrid

About The Position

At Blizzard, we craft genre‑defining games and legendary worlds for all to share. Through unparalleled creativity and storytelling, we create immersive universes and iconic characters that are beloved across platforms, borders, backgrounds, and generations – only made possible by building a work environment that cultivates the artistry of game development and unleashes the aspirations of our people. We are looking for a Senior II Lighting Artist to help craft a new, unannounced game for Blizzard. As a senior individual contributor, you will support and develop all aspects of lighting across characters, environments, and cinematics. You thrive in the technical and artistic balance of photometric lighting, cameras, lenses, and post‑processing, and enjoy diving deep into topics such as the exposure triangle and inverse‑square falloff. You are comfortable operating in a dynamic environment, navigating fluid deadlines and changing priorities with purpose. Location Fixed This role is anticipated to be a hybrid work position, with some work on‑site and some work from home. The potential home studio for this role is Irvine, CA or Albany, NY .

Requirements

• 12 years of professional experience working on AAA game‑development teams in a lighting or closely related role.
• Confirmed experience shipping at least one major title in a relevant capacity.
• Proven experience delivering high‑quality lighting solutions in collaboration with art, design, and engineering partners.
• In‑depth knowledge of AAA game engines with a strong understanding of multiple approaches to lighting and look development.
• Extensive Unreal Engine experience, including lighting channels, Lumen, Virtual Shadow Maps (VSM), hardware ray tracing (HWRT), and MegaLights .
• Expert‑level understanding of the interaction between physically‑based rendering and lighting.
• Superb grasp of color theory, composition, and visual storytelling.
• Strong ability to analyze, debug, and optimize lighting for both visual quality and performance.
• A team‑oriented approach to your work, with a strong emphasis on collaboration and cross‑disciplinary partnership.
• The ability to inspire and elevate others through craft excellence and an enthusiastic approach to game development.
• A self‑motivated, proactive problem‑solver who can independently drive complex lighting tasks to completion.
• Strong communication and documentation skills .
• Portfolio showcasing lighting work, including detailed breakdowns that demonstrate artistic intent, technical execution, and problem‑solving.

Nice To Haves

• Experience creating and maintaining post‑process materials.
• Strong illustration or photography background.
• Experience working through early‑development and R&D phases of a project.
• Passion for playing a wide variety of video games.

Responsibilities

• P artner with Directors and Leads to design and implement high‑quality character and environment lighting in Unreal Engine .
• Collaborate closely across disciplines to ensure lighting solutions support both aesthetic goals and gameplay readability.
• Treat every frame as a composition, using atmospherics, color, light, post‑processing, and shadow to enhance mood and storytelling.
• Demonstrate expertise in cinematic global lighting and atmospheric looks, including the creation of lighting Blueprints and light functions.
• Work with Technical Art and Engineering teams to maintain performance targets and diagnose lighting‑related artifacts and issues.
• Contribute to lighting workflows, documentation, and best practices that scale across the team.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance
• 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others
• If the Company requires that you move geographic locations for the job, then you may also be eligible for relocation assistance.

What This Job Offers

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