Lighting Artist / Technical Director (Game Dev)

TL;DR

Lighting Artist / Technical Director (Game Dev): Designing and implementing lighting setups for immersive VR, AR, and location-based experiences with an accent on real-time rendering and PBR pipelines. Focus on optimizing lightmap baking, dynamic lighting, and achieving high-fidelity aesthetics for AAA-quality environments.

Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Salary: $103,812 – $132,930 per year

Company

The leading effects facility in the world, serving the motion picture, commercial production, and attraction industries with a focus on visual effects, VR, and AR.

What you will do

• Design lighting setups for environments, characters, and interactive game assets based on concept artwork.
• Implement lightmap baking, dynamic lighting tools, image based specular lighting, and HDR IBL workflows.
• Collaborate with environment and VFX artists to achieve targets for aesthetics and performance through material shaders and geometry work.
• Partner with level designers to animate dynamic lighting or transitions via level blueprints or sequencers.
• Identify, triage, and fix bugs in collaboration with engineering and other relevant departments.
• Ensure final project assets reach a high degree of polish and optimization.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience as a Lighting TD/Artist in AAA game development or animation/VFX/film.
• Strong technical knowledge of real-time lighting tools, including atmospheric effects, post-processing, and color grading.
• Proficiency with Unreal Engine or Unity, including baked lighting workflows, PBR, and basic level blueprint scripting.
• In-depth knowledge of real-time shader implementations and the specific limitations of shaders in VR.
• Experience with Windows, JIRA, and Perforce for workload and data management.
• A portfolio or reel submission including a detailed breakdown of work is required.

Nice to have

• Background in traditional art, photography, or film studies.
• Proficiency with profiling tools to diagnose lighting-related performance issues.
• Experience with Maya, Unity, Substance Designer/Painter, Zbrush, Mudbox, Houdini, Mari, 3D StudioMax, Photoshop, or Nuke.
• Interest and capacity to work with proprietary toolsets.

Culture & Benefits

• Opportunity to work on award-winning immersive storytelling projects like Vader Immortal.
• Collaborative environment blending best-in-class visuals, sound, and narrative.
• Access to medical, financial, and other benefits packages dependent on position level.
• Inclusive workplace championing diverse ideas to create world-class stories.