Full-Time

Senior Lighting Artist

Updated on 8/1/2026

Keywords Studios

Keywords Studios

10,001+ employees

Global game development and testing services

Compensation Overview

CA$90k - CA$100k/yr

Remote in Canada

Remote

Remote within Ontario, Quebec, or British Columbia.

Category
Art, Graphics & Animation (1)
Required Skills
Python
Unreal Engine
Blender
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe After Effects
Version Control
JIRA
Confluence

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Requirements
  • 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.
  • Strong experience with a professional real-time lighting toolset, including Unreal Engine 5 or another modern real-time engine, Lumen or comparable real-time global-illumination systems, GPU Lightmass or 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, and Jira, Confluence, Miro or comparable planning and documentation tools.
  • A resume and portfolio or reel link are required.
  • Please include shipped-game credits or comparable professional project experience where applicable.
Responsibilities
  • 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 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.
  • 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.
  • Help artists understand priorities, expected outcomes, acceptance criteria, and milestone polish requirements.
  • Track the visual progress of assigned lighting work and identify scenes requiring additional support, revision, or escalation.
  • Verify that feedback has been addressed and completed work meets the established quality bar before submission.
  • Mentor junior and mid-level artists in lighting fundamentals, technical execution, scene organization, optimization, and production practices.
  • Lead by example through strong artistic execution, professional communication, reliable follow-through, and practical problem-solving.
  • Help resolve differing artistic opinions by referring decisions to approved visual targets, gameplay needs, technical constraints, and project priorities.
  • Escalate unresolved quality, scope, staffing, scheduling, or technical risks to appropriate project leads.
  • Work with Art Direction and Production to break down lighting goals into tasks, priorities, estimates, and milestone deliverables.
  • Help assess lighting scope, scene complexity, dependencies, and production risks.
  • Support task assignment based on artist strengths, project priorities, and schedule needs.
  • Provide progress updates and communicate when work is likely to miss visual, technical, or scheduling expectations.
  • Participate in daily reviews, milestone evaluations, client reviews, and project-planning discussions.
  • Help prepare lighting work for internal reviews, client presentations, milestone submissions, and final delivery.
  • Balance hands-on production responsibilities with review, mentorship, troubleshooting, and team support.
  • Adapt plans and priorities when creative direction, production scope, technical requirements, or client feedback changes.
  • Partner with Technical Art and Engineering to ensure lighting solutions are visually effective, technically stable, and appropriate for the target platform.
  • Work within budgets for frame rate, dynamic lights, shadows, volumetrics, reflections, global illumination, memory, and scalability.
  • Diagnose and resolve issues involving exposure, shadow artifacts, light leaking, reflections, global illumination, volumetrics, bake quality, material response, and post-processing.
  • Determine when to use dynamic, baked, stationary, or hybrid lighting approaches based on project requirements.
  • Profile lighting work and make informed visual tradeoffs to meet performance requirements.
  • Validate lighting across gameplay cameras, display settings, hardware targets, times of day, weather states, and scalability levels.
  • Help develop and maintain reusable lighting setups, templates, documentation, validation processes, and best practices.
  • Identify workflow inefficiencies and recommend practical improvements to Art Direction, Technical Art, or Production.
  • Follow project standards for scene organization, naming conventions, source control, documentation, and asset integration.
  • 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 in gameplay and cinematics.
  • Partner with Cinematics teams on shot composition, continuity, exposure, character lighting, and narrative focus.
  • Communicate artistic and technical tradeoffs clearly to creative and non-creative stakeholders.
  • Work effectively with distributed teams, partner studios, external vendors, and clients across different time zones.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience working in co-development, outsourcing, consulting, or work-for-hire game production.
  • Experience contributing to AAA PC or console titles.
  • Experience working across both realistic and stylized visual pipelines.
  • Previous experience acting as a lighting point person, feature owner, task lead, or senior reviewer.
  • Experience coordinating the work of other artists without formal management authority.
  • Experience working with remote teams, partner studios, or external vendors.
  • Experience owning the lighting for a level, biome, world region, cinematic sequence, or major gameplay feature.
  • Advanced Unreal Engine knowledge, including Lumen, Nanite, Virtual Shadow Maps, volumetric fog, reflection systems, exposure controls, post-process volumes, lighting channels, 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 in a real-time engine.
  • Knowledge of cinematography, photography, film lighting, camera exposure, lens behavior, and color science.
  • Experience with HDR displays, tone mapping, platform calibration, accessibility considerations, or multiple display formats.
  • Familiarity with rendering pipelines, shader behavior, material development, and image-based lighting.
  • Familiarity with Blueprints, Python, editor scripting, automation, or technical-art workflows.
  • Experience creating lighting documentation, templates, validation tools, or review processes.
  • Experience participating in estimates, staffing discussions, hiring reviews, portfolio evaluations, or art tests.
  • A portfolio or reel should demonstrate high-quality real-time lighting with composition, mood, color, contrast, readability, atmosphere, and scene cohesion.
  • A portfolio or reel should show work presented in a commercial, proprietary, or modern real-time engine.
  • A portfolio or reel should clearly explain the applicant's individual contribution, responsibilities, workflow, and production decisions.
  • A portfolio or reel should demonstrate gameplay lighting that guides attention, supports navigation, and reinforces the intended player experience.
  • A portfolio or reel should demonstrate effective integration between lighting, environments, materials, VFX, atmosphere, characters, and post-processing.
  • A portfolio or reel should demonstrate understanding of optimization, scalability, technical limitations, and production constraints.
  • A portfolio or reel should include examples showing ownership of lighting from initial direction or blockout through final delivery.
  • A portfolio or reel should demonstrate the ability to work from concept art, reference, environment blockouts, narrative direction, gameplay requirements, or incomplete creative direction.
  • A portfolio or reel should demonstrate adaptability across different projects, genres, visual styles, or lighting conditions.
  • Applicants are encouraged to include day and night treatments of the same environment.
  • Applicants are encouraged to include dynamic and baked lighting examples.
  • Applicants are encouraged to include lighting created for different gameplay states, weather conditions, or times of day.
  • Applicants are encouraged to include before-and-after comparisons showing how lighting improved readability, mood, composition, or performance.
  • Applicants are encouraged to include examples of scenes reviewed or completed under their guidance, with responsibilities clearly explained.
  • Applicants are encouraged to include lighting guides, benchmark scenes, review notes, color scripts, documentation, or templates created for other artists.
  • Applicants should clearly identify their individual contribution to collaborative work.

Keywords Studios provides technical and creative services for the global video games industry, covering everything from initial art and development to localization and player support. The company operates through a global network of over 70 studios, using an end-to-end platform and proprietary technology to manage tasks like testing, audio production, and content moderation. Unlike specialized agencies, Keywords Studios offers a single point of contact for the entire game lifecycle, providing bespoke solutions that scale across 25+ countries. Its goal is to help developers and publishers bring their intellectual property to life through digital content that entertains, connects, and educates.

Company Size

10,001+

Company Stage

IPO

Headquarters

Dublin, Ireland

Founded

1998

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Acquired Certain Affinity to expand AAA game development capabilities in premium market[2][6]
  • 2024 £2.2B acquisition by EQT, CPP, Temasek signals strong investor confidence and enables expansion[2][6]
  • Integrating AI sentiment analysis with LLMs to deliver deeper gamer insights to publishers like Activision EA[1][2]

What critics are saying

  • Cost-cutting model driving 50–70% talent attrition in 6–12 months due to morale collapse[Source]
  • Union backlash over lowballing translator wages risks losing major clients like Ubisoft EA in 12–18 months[Source]
  • Repeated layoffs and CFO exit signal instability, pushing publishers to shift to LXG Accenture in 9–15 months[Source]

What makes Keywords Studios unique

  • End-to-end platform with proprietary tech serving 24 of top 25 game publishers[4][8]
  • Validated generative AI cannot replace human artists after testing 400+ tools[6][8]
  • Offers 7+ service segments including art, audio, QA, localization, and player support[2][7]

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Benefits

Health Insurance

Dental Insurance

Vision Insurance

Life Insurance

Disability Insurance

Unlimited Paid Time Off

Paid Vacation

401(k) Company Match

401(k) Retirement Plan

Flexible Work Hours

Company Equity

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

20%

1 year growth

20%

2 year growth

20%
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