Senior Lighting Artist

Are you an experienced Senior Lighting Artist with expertise in real‑time lighting, cinematic environments and visual storytelling in modern game engines?

This is an exciting opportunity to join a growing game development studio, working on a high‑quality title where you will shape the lighting vision across environments and cinematics. You’ll collaborate closely with art, design and engineering teams to deliver visually compelling, performance‑optimised lighting that enhances gameplay and narrative.

About the role

You will play a key role in defining and delivering lighting across a current project, working alongside creative and technical teams to ensure consistency, quality and immersion. You will contribute to both gameplay and cinematic lighting, balancing artistic direction with technical constraints, and helping evolve workflows and tools to support production efficiency.

What you’ll do

• Create high‑quality real‑time lighting for environments, characters and cinematic sequences
• Collaborate with environment art, VFX and design teams to achieve cohesive visual storytelling
• Prototype and refine lighting setups to support gameplay readability, mood and narrative intent
• Optimise lighting systems to meet performance and platform requirements
• Act as a bridge between art and engineering to improve rendering features, shaders and pipelines
• Contribute to tooling and workflow improvements with technical and engineering teams
• Ensure lighting quality aligns with milestones and project goals

What we’re looking for:

Experience

• Proven experience as a lighting artist in game development
• Experience delivering real‑time lighting in modern game engines
• Experience working on both gameplay environments and cinematic sequences

Skills

• Strong understanding of lighting principles including colour, value, shading, PBR and HDR
• Ability to create visually compelling lighting that enhances player experience and storytelling
• Experience optimising for performance without compromising quality
• Strong collaboration and communication skills across disciplines
• Knowledge of image editing and colour grading tools such as Photoshop, Nuke or DaVinci Resolve
• Ability to work independently and take ownership of visual quality

Nice to have

• Experience with advanced cinematic lighting and character presentation
• Broad artistic background including photography, cinematography or visual arts
• Experience contributing to rendering pipelines or technical workflows

Working style / behaviours

• Highly collaborative with strong cross‑discipline communication
• Curious and proactive problem‑solver
• Detail‑oriented with a strong focus on visual quality
• Comfortable taking ownership and working independently
• Passionate about creating immersive player experiences

Why join

• Opportunity to shape lighting on a high‑quality game project
• Collaborative, supportive studio culture with focus on autonomy and growth
• Hybrid working model with flexible work‑from‑home days
• Competitive benefits including bonus, healthcare and wellbeing support
• Studio focused on creativity, team connection and long‑term development

If you’re a skilled lighting artist who thrives in a creative, collaborative environment, we’d love to hear from you. Apply now or email Joe McKernan - jm@skillsearch.com

Years of experience and salary levels are shown purely as a guide. We will only consider applications from candidates that can demonstrate the skills or experience required for the role.

Please be aware that while we would love to respond to every application we receive, due to high numbers we cannot guarantee this. We do however appreciate any time you invest into the application and will make sure to get in touch should anything in future more closely fit your skillset.