Senior Lighting Artist

We are seeking a highly skilled and creative Senior Lighting Artist to define the visual tone and atmosphere of our projects. This role involves taking ownership of lighting pipelines, contributing to visual storytelling, and collaborating across disciplines to deliver stunning, immersive environments. You will shape the mood and readability of game worlds, using lighting to enhance gameplay, guide players, and support narrative beats, working closely with art direction, environment, and technical artists.

Must Have

• Design and implement high-quality lighting across environments, characters, and cinematics.
• Collaborate with art direction to define and maintain the visual tone of the project.
• Work closely with environment and level design teams to ensure lighting enhances gameplay and readability.
• Optimize lighting for performance across platforms while maintaining visual quality.
• Develop and maintain lighting workflows and documentation.
• Troubleshoot and resolve lighting-related issues in engine.
• Provide feedback and mentorship to junior and mid-level artists.
• 4+ years of professional experience in lighting for games or real-time applications.
• Expertise in lighting tools and techniques within game engines such as Unreal or Unity.
• Strong understanding of lighting theory, colour, composition, and mood.
• Experience in optimising lighting for performance across platforms.
• Solid grasp of PBR workflows, post-processing, and real-time rendering.
• Ability to work independently and take ownership of lighting across large scenes.
• Portfolio showcasing exceptional lighting work in real-time environments.

Good to Have

• Experience with cinematic lighting or cutscene workflows.
• Familiarity with shader development or technical art pipelines.

Perks & Benefits

• Flexible hours
• Duvet days
• Birthday off
• Dedicated personal development time and support
• Regular socials
• Excellent holiday offering
• Pension scheme
• Health insurance
• Life cover

Description

We’re looking for a highly skilled and creative Senior Lighting Artist to join our team and help define the visual tone and atmosphere of our projects. This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced artist to take ownership of lighting pipelines, contribute to visual storytelling, and collaborate across disciplines to deliver stunning, immersive environments.

As a Senior Lighting Artist, you’ll play a key role in shaping the mood and readability of our worlds, using lighting to enhance gameplay, guide the player, and support narrative beats. You’ll work closely with art direction, environment teams, and technical artists.

The rundown:

• 12 month fixed term contract
• Full time (37.5 hours per week)
• Fully remote within the UK
• Salary is competitive and dependent on experience

Key responsibilities:

• Design and implement high-quality lighting across environments, characters, and cinematics.
• Collaborate with art direction to define and maintain the visual tone of the project.
• Work closely with environment and level design teams to ensure lighting enhances gameplay and readability.
• Optimize lighting for performance across platforms while maintaining visual quality.
• Develop and maintain lighting workflows and documentation.
• Troubleshoot and resolve lighting-related issues in engine.
• Provide feedback and mentorship to junior and mid-level artists.

Requirements

The skills you’ll need:

• Has 4+ years of professional experience in lighting for games or real-time applications.
• Demonstrates expertise in lighting tools and techniques within game engines such as Unreal or Unity.
• Has a strong understanding of lighting theory, colour, composition, and mood.
• Is experienced in optimising lighting for performance across platforms.
• Has a solid grasp of PBR workflows, post-processing, and real-time rendering.
• Can work independently and take ownership of lighting across large scenes.
• Has a portfolio that showcases exceptional lighting work in real-time environments.

The nice to haves:

• Experience with cinematic lighting or cutscene workflows.
• Familiarity with shader development or technical art pipelines.

Benefits

We are nDreams – we develop and publish the world’s most immersive VR games. You may know us as the team behind Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, Synapse, Phantom: Covert Ops, Fracked, and the recently released FRENZIES. With humble beginnings as an independent studio, we combine amazing projects and considerable scale with a personal, caring touch.

We believe the best workplaces and games are created by diverse, happy and safe teams. We're committed to building a culture centred on respect, wellbeing and balance. It's crucial we make our games and industry more accessible to underrepresented communities. We strive to live this through the people we hire, the experiences we create and the causes we support.

We want everyone to have the opportunity to bring their best, authentic self to work. Please let us know if you require reasonable adjustments during the interview process by emailing interviewing@ndreams.com or speaking to your nDreams recruiter. For more information about reasonable adjustments, check out this guidance from Scope.

We offer great perks, including flexible hours, duvets days, your birthday off, dedicated personal development time and support, as well as regular socials. Beyond this, there’s an excellent holiday offering, pension scheme, health insurance, life cover and much more.