Lead Lighting Artist Vic/SA/Qld

Keywords Studios Plc; Melbourne; Hybrid; AUD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Keywords Studios in Australia’s Liquid Development studio is seeking a Senior Lighting Artist/Team Lead to shape high-quality lighting for real-time game environments. You will mentor a diverse team of lighting artists, collaborate with the Art Director, and ensure artistic consistency and technical performance across multiple platforms.

The role emphasizes leadership, strong portfolio in real-time lighting, and the ability to push innovative visuals while aligning with project direction for

Qualifications

• Must have extensive experience leading art teams and projects.
• Exceptional leadership and communication skills to guide a diverse team.
• Extensive experience as a Lighting Artist in the video game industry with a strong portfolio.
• Strong understanding of lighting, composition, colour theory, and visual storytelling.

Responsibilities

• Lead dedicated art teams across geographies, ensuring quality and productivity.
• Mentor lighting artists and drive professional growth and technique development.
• Conduct regular performance evaluations and provide constructive feedback.
• Collaborate with Art Director to maintain overarching art direction and consistency.
• Work with cross-functional teams to integrate lighting into pipelines and assets.
• Push visual quality while meeting real-time performance constraints across platforms.

Skills

Leadership

Creative direction

Real-time lighting

Lighting theory

Unreal Engine

Unity

Lumen / lighting tools

Pipeline integration

Team mentoring

Tools

Unreal Engine

Unity

Lumen

Post-processing

Job description

We're constantly working with some of the world's largest Publishers and most popular AAA games. Here in Australia we have studios located in Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne and employ about two hundred of Australia's leading game professionals. Our studio brands operating under the Keywords Studios group are Tantalus Media (Vic, SA, Qld), and Liquid Development (Vic, SA, Qld).

This position is to be hired into the Liquid Development studio brand:

Liquid Development was founded in 2000 and is the largest outsourcing art studio in North America. Liquid Development is producing work at the forefront of modern game production, and the demand for our services continues to grow. Our team has contributed to AAA titles within the Halo, Mass Effect, Borderlands, and Call of Duty franchises.

Liquid Development expanded into Australia in 2026, and now consists of 30+ talented creatives across Australia. We offer a fun and cooperative work atmosphere, where collaboration is encouraged among a diversely skilled team, to remain on the cutting edge of content creation. Liquid Development collaborates closely with Tantalus Media - together we create full scope projects for some of the biggest game publishers in the world.

These positions are preferably based in either Adelaide, Brisbane, or Melbourne. Other Australian cities will be considered as remote based.

Leadership & Team Management

• Managing dedicated art teams across geographies or studios, emphasizing overall quality, productivity, and continuous team development.
• Lead and mentor a diverse team of lighting artists, fostering their professional growth and artistic development.
• Conduct regular performance evaluations, providing constructive feedback and facilitating skill-building opportunities.
• Identify skill gaps within the team and implement training programs to enhance capabilities and artistic techniques.
• Create high‑quality, visually compelling lighting for environments and cinematics.
• Produce lighting that aligns with the project's artistic direction and storytelling, through mood, tone and atmosphere.
• Develop lighting optimized for real-time game engines.

Collaboration and Production

• Work closely with the Art Director to maintain the overall art direction.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams throughout the production pipeline to ensure artistic consistency and quality.
• Participate in reviews, feedback sessions, and iterative development processes.

Technical Art & Optimisation

• Ensure lighting meets performance, memory, and platform‑specific requirements across a variety of platforms.
• Collaborate closely with environment, VFX and technical art teams to integrate lighting with assets and pipelines
• Apply strong understanding of lighting for real‑time performance.
• Maintain consistency in quality while adhering to technical constraints and engine limitations.
• Troubleshoot and resolve creative and technical lighting challenges.
• Stay current with industry trends, emerging technologies, tools, and workflows.
• Contribute ideas and improvements to pipelines and production processes.
• Continuously push the visual quality and innovation of game art production.

Required Skills and experience

• Experience leading art teams and projects.
• Exceptional leadership and communication skills, with the ability to inspire and guide a team towards achieving project goals.
• Extensive experience as a Lighting Artist within the video game industry, with a strong portfolio showcasing high‑quality real‑time game assets.
• Strong understanding of lighting, composition, colour theory, and visual storytelling.
• Extensive experience creating optimized assets for modern real‑time game engines such as Unreal Engine or Unity.
• Strong understanding of lighting tools (Lumen, light baking and post‑processing), performance optimization, and technical limitations across multiple gaming platforms.
• Extensive knowledge of game development pipelines and the ability to adapt artistic styles to suit various game genres and target platforms.

Desirable skills and experience

• Passion for gaming and a strong understanding of market trends, player expectations, and gaming cultures across PC, Console, and Nintendo platforms.
• Experience successfully guiding and communicating with other art teams to ensure artistic vision and asset quality are maintained from concept through to final in‑game implementation.

If you'd like to know more about Keywords Studios we recommend visiting our corporate site HERE

PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION POLICY

Keywords Studios is strongly committed to protecting your personal information. By sending your CV/Resume, you are agreeing to our terms and conditions and consent to your data being managed and retained in accordance with our data privacy and retention policy https://www.keywordsstudios.com/en/applicant-privacy-notice/

Role Information: EN

Location: Asia Pacific, Australia

Area of Work: Art Services

Service: Create

Employment Type: Full Time, Permanent

Working Pattern: Hybrid

PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION POLICY

Keywords Studios is strongly committed to protecting your personal information. By sending your CV/Resume, you are agreeing to our terms and conditions and consent to your data being managed and retained in accordance with our data privacy and retention policy https://www.keywordsstudios.com/en/applicant-privacy-notice/.