Senior Lighting Artist / Technical Director (Gamedev)

TL;DR

Senior Lighting Artist / Technical Director (Gamedev): Developing lighting setups and pipelines for immersive VR/AR experiences with an accent on real-time rendering and artistic visual quality. Focus on optimizing PBR pipelines, implementing dynamic and baked lighting, and ensuring high-performance visuals across immersive platforms.

Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Salary: $134,300 – $171,800 per year

Company

hirify.global is the world's leading effects facility, pioneering visual effects and immersive cinema for film, commercials, and attractions.

What you will do

• Define and direct lighting tools, setups, and rigs for environments, characters, and interactive game assets.
• Collaborate with Render Engineers to develop and test the project's specific lighting toolset.
• Implement lightmap baking, dynamic lighting, image-based specular lighting, and raytracing.
• Partner with environment and VFX artists to achieve aesthetic targets through material shaders and geometry work.
• Animate dynamic lighting or transitions using level blueprints or sequencers.
• Optimize workflows and fix bugs to bring the final project to a high degree of polish.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience as a lighting TD/artist in 3D game development or animation/VFX film studios.
• Strong technical understanding of real-time lighting, atmospheric effects, post-processing, and HDR IBL workflows.
• Proficiency in Unreal Engine, Unity, or equivalent real-time platforms.
• In-depth knowledge of PBR pipelines, real-time shader implementations, and VR shader limitations.
• Experience with Windows, JIRA, and Perforce.
• A portfolio or reel submission including a detailed breakdown of work is required.

Nice to have

• Background in traditional art, photography, or film studies.
• Experience with Maya, Substance Designer/Painter, Zbrush, Mudbox, Houdini, Mari, 3ds Max, Photoshop, or Nuke.
• Proficiency with profiling tools to diagnose lighting-related performance issues.
• Passion for VR and AR VFX production.

Culture & Benefits

• Opportunity to work on award-winning immersive projects and push the boundaries of digital storytelling.
• Comprehensive medical, financial, and other corporate benefits.
• Collaborative environment blending technical ability with high-level artistic talent.
• Work within the ecosystem of Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company.