Lead Lighting Artist Vic/SA/Qld

Keywords Studios Plc; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Keywords Studios in Australia seeks a senior Lighting Lead to direct art teams across studios, shaping lighting for real-time environments and cinematics. You will mentor artists, ensure artistic consistency, and work closely with the Art Director to maintain a strong visual direction.

The role emphasizes lighting optimization for performance and cross‑platform pipelines, with collaboration across environment, VFX, and technical art teams. Hybrid work is available, based in Australia.

Qualifications

• Experience leading art teams and projects.
• Exceptional leadership and communication skills to guide a team toward goals.
• Extensive experience as a Lighting Artist in real-time game development.
• Strong understanding of lighting, composition, colour theory, and storytelling.
• Experience with Unreal Engine or Unity and related lighting tools.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor lighting artists across geographies or studios.
• Create high-quality, visually compelling lighting for environments and cinematics.
• Collaborate with Art Director and cross-functional teams to maintain art direction.
• Ensure lighting meets performance and engine constraints across platforms.
• Stay current with industry trends and contribute to pipeline improvements.

Skills

Leadership

Team management

Lighting artistry

Real-time lighting

Unreal Engine/Unity

Lumen / post-processing

Performance optimization

Job description

Job Description

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.

Lighting Creation

• 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.

Innovation & Continuous Improvement

• 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.

Qualifications

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.
• A keen eye for detail and strong observation skills.
• 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.

Additional Information

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

Studio: Keywords Studios

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/.

Company 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: https://www.liquiddevelopment.com/ https://www.artstation.com/liquiddevelopment 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.