Senior Lighting Artist – Talent Pipeline

Keywords Studios

Senior Lighting Artist responsible for creating real-time lighting and guiding execution across GameSim projects. Collaborating with various teams to ensure quality and efficiency in lighting production.

Posted 7/17/2026full-timeRemote • 🇨🇦 CanadaSenior💰 CA$90,000 - CA$100,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in creating high-quality real-time lighting for gameplay environments and cinematics, with a strong understanding of lighting fundamentals and optimization techniques. Capable of providing constructive feedback and collaborating effectively with cross-functional teams to meet artistic and technical standards.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Real-Time Lighting CreationUnreal Engine ProficiencyLighting Fundamentals ExpertiseDynamic And Baked Lighting ExperienceArtistic And Technical Problem Solving

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Lighting FundamentalsColor GradingExposure ManagementShadow ComplexityGlobal IlluminationVolumetricsPhysically Based RenderingMaterial ResponseLighting OptimizationVisual Hierarchy

Soft Skills

Interpersonal CommunicationConstructive FeedbackOrganizational SkillsCollaborationPresentation Skills

Tools & Technologies

Unreal EngineReal-Time EnginesPost-Processing ToolsLighting Tools

Industry Keywords

Game DevelopmentCinematicsEnvironmental StorytellingArt DirectionInteractive Sequences

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Unreal Engine

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

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.

Requirements

What you’ll need

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.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Opportunity to work on different projects
3 weeks of paid leave
Benefits package including medical, dental and vision
Sick Leave
Disability Coverage
Corporate holidays
Professional Development