Senior Lighting Artist - GameSim - Talent Pipeline

Keywords Studios

3d•CA$90,000 - CA$100,000•Remote

About The Position

GameSim is a game development studio that partners with clients to build games across PC/console and a range of art styles. We care about craftsmanship, collaboration, and shipping work we’re proud to put our names on. If you love building environments and believable spaces we’d like to meet you. Our headquarters is based in Orlando, FL! Talent Pipeline Posting Notice Please note that this posting is not tied to an immediate vacancy. We are proactively building a pipeline of qualified candidates in anticipation of potential hiring needs over the coming months. Applications will be reviewed and retained for future consideration as opportunities arise. We are seeking a Senior Lighting Artist to create high-quality real-time lighting and help guide lighting execution across GameSim projects. This is a hands-on senior role with leadership responsibilities. In addition to producing lighting work, you will review the work of other artists, provide clear direction and feedback, help organize lighting tasks, and ensure that scenes meet the visual and technical quality bar established by Art Direction and the client. You will collaborate closely with Art Directors, Environment Artists, Technical Artists, VFX Artists, Designers, Engineers, Producers, clients, and partner studios. You will help translate creative direction into practical lighting solutions that support mood, gameplay readability, environmental storytelling, narrative, and performance. This role may oversee the day-to-day work of other lighting artists or multidisciplinary artists contributing to lighting. It does not necessarily include formal people-management responsibilities, but it requires accountability for team output, effective mentorship, and the ability to raise concerns when work is at risk of missing quality, schedule, or technical expectations.

Requirements

Professional experience creating lighting for games, real-time projects, or a closely related field.
At least one shipped game or comparable professional real-time project.
A portfolio or reel demonstrating high-quality real-time lighting.
Strong understanding of lighting fundamentals, including value, color, contrast, composition, visual hierarchy, atmosphere, exposure, shadow, and material response.
Experience lighting gameplay environments and interactive real-time scenes.
Strong understanding of how lighting supports mood, gameplay readability, navigation, environmental storytelling, and player focus.
Professional experience using Unreal Engine or another modern real-time engine.
Experience with dynamic and baked lighting, global illumination, reflections, volumetrics, exposure, color grading, and post-processing.
Working knowledge of physically based rendering, material response, tone mapping, and high-dynamic-range lighting.
Understanding of real-time lighting optimization, including light cost, shadow complexity, volumetrics, reflections, memory, scalability, and platform constraints.
Experience taking ownership of lighting for a level, scene, sequence, environment, or comparable area of production.
Experience reviewing the work of other artists and providing clear, actionable feedback.
Ability to identify when work does not meet the established quality bar and communicate what is required to improve it.
Demonstrated ability to balance artistic quality, technical limitations, production scope, and schedule requirements.
Ability to solve artistic and technical problems with limited supervision.
Strong written, verbal, presentation, and interpersonal communication skills.
Experience collaborating with Art Direction, Environment Art, Technical Art, VFX, Design, Engineering, Production, or Cinematics.
Ability to organize priorities, communicate risks, and follow work through to completion.
Ability to adapt to different projects, visual styles, engines, pipelines, platforms, and client expectations.
Comfort participating in internal and client-facing art reviews.
Candidates should have strong experience with a professional real-time lighting toolset. This may include: Unreal Engine 5 or another modern real-time engine, Lumen or comparable real-time global-illumination systems, GPU Lightmass, CPU Lightmass, or comparable baked-lighting systems, Real-time profiling, visualization, and debugging tools, Photoshop or comparable image-editing software, DaVinci Resolve, Nuke, After Effects, or comparable color and compositing tools, Maya, Blender, 3ds Max, or another 3D content-creation package, Perforce or another production source-control system, Jira, Confluence, Miro, or comparable planning and documentation tools.
Expertise with every listed application is not required. We are primarily interested in candidates who demonstrate strong lighting fundamentals, production judgment, technical adaptability, and the ability to learn project-specific tools.
Your portfolio or reel should demonstrate: High-quality real-time lighting with strong composition, mood, color, contrast, readability, atmosphere, and scene cohesion.
Work presented in a commercial, proprietary, or modern real-time engine.
Clear explanations of your individual contribution, responsibilities, workflow, and production decisions.
Gameplay lighting that guides attention, supports navigation, and reinforces the intended player experience.
Effective integration between lighting, environments, materials, VFX, atmosphere, characters, and post-processing.
An understanding of optimization, scalability, technical limitations, and production constraints.
Examples showing ownership of lighting from initial direction or blockout through final delivery.
The ability to work from concept art, reference, environment blockouts, narrative direction, gameplay requirements, or incomplete creative direction.
Adaptability across different projects, genres, visual styles, or lighting conditions.

Nice To Haves

Experience working in co-development, outsourcing, consulting, or work-for-hire game production.
Experience contributing to AAA PC or console titles.
Experience working across both realistic and stylized visual pipelines.
Previous experience acting as a lighting point person, feature owner, task lead, or senior reviewer.
Experience coordinating the work of other artists without formal management authority.
Experience working with remote teams, partner studios, or external vendors.
Experience owning the lighting for a level, biome, world region, cinematic sequence, or major gameplay feature.
Advanced Unreal Engine knowledge, including Lumen, Nanite, Virtual Shadow Maps, volumetric fog, reflection systems, exposure controls, post-process volumes, lighting channels, and scalability settings.
Experience with dynamic time-of-day systems, weather systems, destructible environments, or changing gameplay states.
Experience lighting cinematics, characters, dialogue scenes, or scripted sequences in a real-time engine.
Knowledge of cinematography, photography, film lighting, camera exposure, lens behavior, and color science.
Experience with HDR displays, tone mapping, platform calibration, accessibility considerations, or multiple display formats.
Familiarity with rendering pipelines, shader behavior, material development, and image-based lighting.
Familiarity with Blueprints, Python, editor scripting, automation, or technical-art workflows.
Experience creating lighting documentation, templates, validation tools, or review processes.
Experience participating in estimates, staffing discussions, hiring reviews, portfolio evaluations, or art tests.
Day and night treatments of the same environment.
Dynamic and baked lighting examples.
Lighting created for different gameplay states, weather conditions, or times of day.
Before-and-after comparisons showing how lighting improved readability, mood, composition, or performance.
Examples of scenes that were reviewed or completed under your guidance, with your responsibilities clearly explained.
Lighting guides, benchmark scenes, review notes, color scripts, documentation, or templates created for other artists.
Please clearly identify your individual contribution to collaborative work.

Responsibilities

Create high-quality real-time lighting for gameplay environments, levels, cinematics, characters, and interactive sequences.
Translate art direction, concept art, reference material, gameplay requirements, narrative goals, and client feedback into effective lighting solutions.
Use lighting to establish mood, atmosphere, visual hierarchy, environmental storytelling, and player focus.
Ensure lighting supports gameplay readability, navigation, combat visibility, character presentation, and important interactive elements.
Develop and refine exposure, color, contrast, fog, atmosphere, reflections, shadows, emissive response, color grading, and post-processing.
Create lighting for a range of visual styles, including realistic, stylized, cinematic, and highly art-directed projects.
Maintain consistency across connected environments, gameplay spaces, cinematics, times of day, weather conditions, and lighting scenarios.
Bring assigned scenes to final quality while meeting technical requirements and production deadlines.
Oversee lighting work for an assigned area of the project, such as a level, world region, sequence, feature, or milestone.
Review the work of lighting artists and other contributors whose work affects the final lighting result.
Provide clear, constructive, and actionable feedback through live reviews, written notes, paintovers, reference boards, documentation, and in-engine examples.
Ensure lighting work follows the visual direction, technical standards, and quality expectations established by Art Direction and the client.
Help artists understand priorities, expected outcomes, acceptance criteria, and the level of polish required for each milestone.
Track the visual progress of assigned lighting work and identify scenes that require additional support, revision, or escalation.
Verify that feedback has been addressed and that completed work meets the established quality bar before submission.
Mentor junior and mid-level artists in lighting fundamentals, technical execution, scene organization, optimization, and production practices.
Lead by example through strong artistic execution, professional communication, reliable follow-through, and practical problem-solving.
Help resolve differing artistic opinions by referring decisions back to approved visual targets, gameplay needs, technical constraints, and project priorities.
Escalate unresolved quality, scope, staffing, scheduling, or technical risks to the appropriate project leads.
Work with Art Direction and Production to break down lighting goals into clear tasks, priorities, estimates, and milestone deliverables.
Help assess lighting scope, scene complexity, dependencies, and production risks.
Support task assignment based on artist strengths, project priorities, and schedule needs.
Provide progress updates and communicate when work is likely to miss visual, technical, or scheduling expectations.
Participate in daily reviews, milestone evaluations, client reviews, and project-planning discussions.
Help prepare lighting work for internal reviews, client presentations, milestone submissions, and final delivery.
Balance hands-on production responsibilities with review, mentorship, troubleshooting, and team support.
Adapt plans and priorities when creative direction, production scope, technical requirements, or client feedback changes.
Partner with Technical Art and Engineering to ensure lighting solutions are visually effective, technically stable, and appropriate for the target platform.
Work within established budgets for frame rate, dynamic lights, shadows, volumetrics, reflections, global illumination, memory, and scalability.
Diagnose and resolve issues involving exposure, shadow artifacts, light leaking, reflections, global illumination, volumetrics, bake quality, material response, and post-processing.
Determine when to use dynamic, baked, stationary, or hybrid lighting approaches based on project requirements.
Profile lighting work and make informed visual tradeoffs to meet performance requirements.
Validate lighting across relevant gameplay cameras, display settings, hardware targets, times of day, weather states, and scalability levels.
Help develop and maintain reusable lighting setups, templates, documentation, validation processes, and best practices.
Identify workflow inefficiencies and recommend practical improvements to Art Direction, Technical Art, or Production.
Follow project standards for scene organization, naming conventions, source control, documentation, and asset integration.
Collaborate with Environment Art to ensure geometry, materials, composition, and set dressing support the intended lighting.
Partner with VFX to integrate fog, particles, weather, fire, emissive effects, and atmospheric elements.
Work with Design to ensure lighting supports navigation, player guidance, combat readability, objectives, and interactive systems.
Coordinate with Character Art and Animation to maintain readable and appealing character presentation in gameplay and cinematics.
Partner with Cinematics teams on shot composition, continuity, exposure, character lighting, and narrative focus.
Communicate artistic and technical tradeoffs clearly to both creative and non-creative stakeholders.
Work effectively with distributed teams, partner studios, external vendors, and clients across different time zones.