Lighting Artist - GameSim - Talent Pipeline

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 Lighting Artist to create high-quality real-time lighting and help support the execution of lighting work across GameSim projects.

This is a hands-on production role with opportunities to take on project-level leadership responsibilities. In addition to completing assigned lighting work, you may help coordinate tasks, review the work of other artists, provide constructive feedback, and ensure scenes meet the visual and technical quality bar established by Art Direction and the client.

You will collaborate with Art Directors, Environment Artists, Technical Artists, VFX Artists, Designers, Engineers, Producers, clients, and partner studios to translate creative direction into lighting solutions that support mood, gameplay readability, environmental storytelling, and performance.

What Success Looks Like

Within your first 90 days, you will:

• Develop a clear understanding of the project’s visual direction, lighting pipeline, gameplay requirements, technical constraints, and production schedule.
• Build effective working relationships with Art Direction, Production, Technical Art, Environment Art, Design, and other project disciplines.
• Create polished lighting work that meets the project’s established visual and technical quality bar.
• Take ownership of lighting for assigned scenes, environments, sequences, or gameplay areas.
• Provide useful feedback and support to other artists when asked to review or coordinate lighting work.
• Identify artistic, technical, or production risks early and communicate them to the appropriate project leads.
• Deliver assigned work on schedule and respond effectively to internal and client feedback.

Responsibilities

Lighting Creation and Execution

• 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 visual consistency across related environments, gameplay spaces, sequences, times of day, and lighting conditions.
• Bring assigned scenes from initial lighting setup through final polish.
• Respond to feedback from Art Direction, project leadership, and clients in a timely and professional manner.
• Ensure completed work meets project requirements for quality, performance, organization, and delivery.

Leadership and Quality Support

• Help oversee lighting work for an assigned scene, group of scenes, feature, or milestone when requested by project leadership.
• Review the work of other lighting artists or multidisciplinary artists contributing to lighting.
• Provide clear, respectful, and actionable feedback through written notes, live reviews, reference images, paintovers, or in-engine examples.
• Help ensure lighting work follows approved visual targets, technical standards, and project requirements.
• Communicate expected outcomes, priorities, and quality standards to artists working within an assigned area.
• Monitor the visual progress of assigned lighting work and identify scenes that may require additional revision or support.
• Confirm that feedback has been addressed before work is submitted for senior, Art Director, or client review.
• Support junior or less-experienced artists with lighting fundamentals, engine workflows, scene organization, optimization, and production practices.
• Lead by example through reliable execution, clear communication, constructive collaboration, and professional conduct.
• Escalate unresolved quality, schedule, scope, or technical concerns to the appropriate senior artist, Art Director, or Producer.

Planning and Production Support

• Work with Art Direction and Production to understand lighting priorities, tasks, estimates, and milestone expectations.
• Help break lighting goals into clear and manageable production tasks.
• Provide progress updates and communicate when assigned work is at risk of missing quality, technical, or scheduling requirements.
• Participate in daily reviews, art reviews, milestone evaluations, and planning discussions.
• Help prepare lighting work for internal reviews, client presentations, milestone submissions, and final delivery.
• Balance hands-on production responsibilities with review, coordination, troubleshooting, and team support.
• Adjust priorities when creative direction, technical requirements, production scope, or client feedback changes.
• Maintain accurate task status and documentation using the project’s production-management tools.

Technical and Pipeline Responsibilities

• Work with Technical Art and Engineering to ensure lighting is visually effective, technically stable, and appropriate for the target platform.
• Follow established budgets for dynamic lights, shadows, volumetrics, reflections, global illumination, memory, and scalability.
• Identify and help resolve issues involving exposure, shadow artifacts, light leaking, reflections, volumetrics, bake quality, material response, and post-processing.
• Use dynamic, baked, stationary, or hybrid lighting approaches according to the project’s established pipeline.
• Profile assigned lighting work and make informed visual adjustments to meet performance requirements.
• Validate lighting across relevant gameplay cameras, display settings, hardware targets, times of day, weather states, and scalability levels.
• Follow project standards for scene organization, naming conventions, source control, documentation, and asset integration.
• Contribute to reusable lighting setups, templates, documentation, validation processes, and team best practices.
• Identify workflow problems and communicate potential improvements to senior artists, Technical Art, or project leadership.

Cross-Discipline Collaboration

• 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.
• Support cinematic lighting needs involving shot composition, continuity, exposure, character lighting, and narrative focus.
• Communicate artistic and technical concerns clearly to both creative and non-creative stakeholders.
• Work effectively with distributed teams, partner studios, external vendors, and clients across different time zones.

Requirements

• Professional experience creating lighting for games, real-time projects, animation, visualization, or a closely related field.
• A portfolio or reel demonstrating strong real-time lighting work.
• Strong understanding of lighting fundamentals, including value, color, contrast, composition, visual hierarchy, atmosphere, exposure, shadow, and material response.
• Experience lighting gameplay environments or interactive real-time scenes.
• 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 or baked lighting, global illumination, reflections, volumetrics, exposure, color grading, and post-processing.
• Working knowledge of physically based rendering and material response.
• Understanding of basic lighting optimization, including light cost, shadows, volumetrics, reflections, scalability, and platform constraints.
• Ability to take ownership of assigned scenes and follow them through review and completion.
• Ability to receive, interpret, and implement artistic and technical feedback.
• Experience reviewing artwork or providing constructive feedback to teammates.
• Ability to identify work that does not meet an established quality target and communicate practical improvements.
• Ability to balance visual quality, technical requirements, production scope, and schedule.
• Strong written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Ability to organize priorities, communicate risks, and follow work through to completion.
• Experience collaborating with multiple game-development disciplines.
• Ability to adapt to different projects, visual styles, engines, pipelines, platforms, and client expectations.
• Ability to work effectively both independently and as part of a distributed team.

Tools and Technical Experience

Candidates should have 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, sound production judgment, adaptability, and the ability to learn project-specific tools.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in co-development, outsourcing, consulting, or work-for-hire game production.
• Experience contributing to a shipped PC or console title.
• Experience working across realistic and stylized visual pipelines.
• Previous experience acting as a lighting point person, task coordinator, reviewer, or feature owner.
• Experience guiding junior artists or supporting teammates without formal management authority.
• Experience working with remote teams, partner studios, or external vendors.
• Experience owning lighting for a level, environment, sequence, or gameplay feature.
• Knowledge of Unreal Engine systems such as Lumen, Nanite, Virtual Shadow Maps, volumetric fog, reflection systems, exposure controls, post-process volumes, 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.
• Knowledge of cinematography, photography, film lighting, camera exposure, and color theory.
• Familiarity with HDR displays, tone mapping, calibration, or accessibility considerations.
• Familiarity with rendering pipelines, shader behavior, and material development.
• Familiarity with Blueprints, Python, editor scripting, automation, or technical-art workflows.
• Experience creating lighting documentation, templates, benchmark scenes, or review materials.

Portfolio Requirements

Your portfolio or reel should demonstrate:

• Strong real-time lighting with effective 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 setup through final delivery.
• The ability to work from concept art, reference, environment blockouts, narrative direction, gameplay requirements, or developing creative direction.
• Adaptability across different projects, genres, visual styles, or lighting conditions.

We also encourage applicants to include:

• 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 work reviewed or coordinated under your guidance, with your responsibilities clearly explained.
• Lighting guides, reference boards, benchmark scenes, review notes, documentation, or templates created for teammates.

Please clearly identify your individual contribution to collaborative work.

How to Apply

A resume and portfolio or reel link are required.

Please include shipped-game credits or comparable professional project experience where applicable. Candidates may be asked to participate in a portfolio review, technical discussion, leadership interview, or art assessment as part of the selection process.

This position is currently open to candidates residing in the following U.S. states only:

Arizona (AZ), Connecticut (CT), Florida (FL), lowa (IA), Illinois (IL), Massachusetts (MA), Maine (ME), Michigan (MI), Minnesota (MN), New Hampshire (NH), Nevada (NV), Ohio (OH), Oregon (OR), South Carolina (SC), Tennessee (TN), Texas (TX), Virginia (VA), Wisconsin (WI), Montana (MT), Alabama (AL), Georgia (GA), Indiana (IN), Louisiana (LA), North Carolina (NC), New Jersey (NJ), Oklahoma (OK), and Utah (UT).

While applicants from all listed states will be considered, the ideal candidate will be located in Orlando (FL) Austin (TX) or New Orleans (LA). Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States and reside in one of the eligible states listed above.

Salary Range: $70,000 USD to $80,000 USD

Benefits

What's in it for you?

• Opportunity to work on different projects
• 3 weeks of accrued paid time off
• Benefits package including medical, dental and vision
• Sick Leave
• Disability Coverage
• Corporate holidays
• 401(k) Retirement Plan with company matching
• Professional Development
• Snacks, drinks, ping pong, and more!

GameSim is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds and identities and evaluate candidates based on skills, experience, and alignment with the role.

Keywords Studios is dedicated to following a well-established Equal Opportunities Policy. We endeavor to create a workplace which provides for equal opportunities for all employees and potential employees.

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