Principal Lighting Artist

Description

High Voltage is actively seeking a Principal Lighting Artist to join our rapidly growing team. This person will work closely with the Lighting Supervisor to help deliver the lighting vision of the game. Ideal candidates will have strong experience in Unreal Engine 5, including advanced lighting workflows and Time of Day (TOD) systems—particularly in dynamic lighting transitions, environment mood shifts, and real-time sky lighting.

Here at High Voltage Software, we firmly believe that the best gameplay experiences are the result of collaboration and iteration between gameplay programmers, designers, and artists.

Responsibilities:

• Carry lighting of environment spaces through from pre-production to final polish
• Help to manage and ensure the integrity of lighting on all assets
• Capably troubleshoot and solve lighting production issues
• Strive to maximize art production performance and predictability
• Stays current on industry trends and techniques, evaluating competitive products, and continually learning new software packages.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 5 years of professional experience as a Lighting Artist in video game development, with at least one shipped AAA title on current generation hardware.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating expert use of light, color, value, and composition to enhance gameplay, mood, and visual storytelling in real-time environments.
• Deep understanding of lighting principles and how light interacts with surfaces and atmospherics (e.g., fog, volumetrics) in a game engine context.
• Proven proficiency in real-time lighting pipelines, tools, and systems used in modern game development, including performance optimization for high frame rates.
• Hands-on experience with Unreal Engine 5, including lighting workflows, Blueprint systems, and the Time of Day system (e.g., animating curves for dynamic lighting transitions).
• Expertise in tools such as 3DS Max, lighting-specific software, and both real-time and offline rendering engines.
• Familiarity with lighting components, set dressing for atmosphere, and maintaining precomputed lighting systems such as light probes and image-based lighting.
• Strong technical aptitude in areas such as HDR, physically-based rendering (PBR), color grading, post-processing effects, tonemapping workflows, EV values, LUTs, and color spaces (linear vs log2).
• Demonstrated ability to debug lighting issues, optimize content for performance, and maintain organized, efficient workflows and asset structures.
• Solid understanding of photographic lighting fundamentals relevant to real-time rendering (e.g., shutter speed, aperture, exposure).
• Ability to self-manage and take ownership of lighting tasks from concept to final polish with minimal supervision.
• Experience documenting lighting workflows and approaches for team-wide adoption and consistency.
• Capable of identifying and executing on multiple lighting approaches to support a given theme, gameplay goal, or narrative direction.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills to work closely with environment artists, level designers, and technical teams.

*Successful candidates must reside in Ontario, Quebec or British Columbia