Principal Lighting Artist

Ghost Story Games; Massachusetts; Remote; USD 131,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Ghost Story Games is seeking a Principal Lighting Artist for a remote role in Massachusetts. You will lead lighting quality for Judas, balancing visually striking scenes with physically plausible exposure, while guiding a broader lighting team through pipeline refinements and tooling improvements.

The ideal candidate has extensive real-time Unreal lighting experience, strong color grading knowledge, and a track record of maintaining high visual standards across cross-functional teams.

Qualifications

• Established experience in the game industry as a Senior to Principal Lighting Artist, preferably on larger, complex productions.
• Extensive experience in lighting for real-time gameplay.
• Expert eye for value, color, composition and crafting deliberate visual hierarchy reads (focus direction, small-medium-large shape balance, ‘80/20 rule’).
• Proficient art and technical experience within Unreal (Unreal 4 preferred) and technical experience in balancing game-spanning illumination and emissive standards for adaptive-exposure and HDR.
• Familiarity with performance evaluation and optimization and experience working with Engineering and Tech Art to maintain best practice examples for the broader lighting team.

Responsibilities

• Play a key role in pushing the visual and technical quality bar for lighting and helping troubleshoot any scalability and quality in execution across a broader lighting team.
• Where needed, help diagnosis and prove out targeted refinements to the technical pipeline and custom tool set for lighting on Judas, including proactive and collaborative engagement with Art Leadership, Tools and Graphics Engineering, Tech art to identify areas for quality, efficiency, or performance gains.
• As a Principal Lighting Artist, you are expected to help uphold the highest standards of aesthetic and technical quality of your own work, and leverage your expertise to identify opportunities for both visual and technical quality improvements across the project and effectively pitch to project leadership

Skills

Senior/Principal

Unreal Engine 4

Real-time lighting

Color grading

HDR pipeline

Performance optimization

Tools

Unreal Engine

Job description

Ghost Story Games is a self-publishing game development studio founded by Ken Levine (Creative Director of System Shock 2, Bioshock, and Bioshock Infinite) and former Irrational Games developers. The studio’s mission is to create narrative-driven experiences rooted in immersive world building and gameplay.

The Challenge

For the remote Principal Lighting Artist role, you should have extensive experience in real-time lighting in Unreal Engine 4, including particular emphasis on in-game environmental and character lighting and a deep experience set in post-process tuning, color grading, and balancing an end-to-end HDR pipeline across a broader lighting team.

As a Principal Lighting Artist, you will work closely with Creative and Art Direction, Design, and Techas a key driver in maintaining the technical and aesthetic bar for lighting in Judas and ensuring a gameplay experience that is both beautiful and cohesive from start to end. For the unique visual identity of Judas, this also includes executing on a unique, dramatic stylization to lighting of the world, while retaining rich credibility and consistency through an expert understanding of a ‘physically plausible’ balance of lighting exposure, illumination and emissive intensities.

What You’ll Take On:

• Play a key role in pushing the visual and technical quality bar for lighting and helping troubleshoot any scalability and quality in execution across a broader lighting team.
• Where needed, help diagnosis and prove out targeted refinements to the technical pipeline and custom tool set for lighting on Judas, including proactive and collaborative engagement with Art Leadership, Tools and Graphics Engineering, Tech art to identify areas for quality, efficiency, or performance gains.
• As a Principal Lighting Artist, you are expected to help uphold the highest standards of aesthetic and technical quality of your own work, and leverage your expertise to identify opportunities for both visual and technical quality improvements across the project and effectively pitch to project leadership

What You Bring:

• Established experience in the game industry as a Senior to Principal Lighting Artist, preferably on larger, complex productions
• Extensive experience in lighting for real-time gameplay. You should be adept at not only crafting stunning scenes, but also leverage a deep understanding of the gameplay experience to create lighting compositions that effectively lead the player’s eye through traversal and combat gameplay, and communicate deliberate emotions in tune with the story
• Expert eye for value, color, composition and crafting deliberate visual hierarchy reads (focus direction, small-medium-large shape balance, ‘80/20 rule’)
• Proficient art and technical experience within Unreal (Unreal 4 preferred) and technical experience in balancing game-spanning illumination and emissive standards for adaptive-exposure and HDR
• Familiarity with performance evaluation and optimization and experience working with Engineering and Tech Art to maintain best practice examples for the broader lighting team

Who You Are:

• Proactive problem solver that enjoys cross-department collaboration, asks engaging questions, and can thoughtfully pitch both creative and visual ideas, as well as technical and process improvements to benefit the quality and efficiency of the project
• For the Principal role, we are especially looking for individuals with experience and mindfulness towards both individual and team efficiency, and proven ability to work on more challenging cross-functional tasks with a very high degree of ambiguity and autonomy
• As a Principal Lighting Artist, you are expected to serve as a significantly positive force multiplier across the team, both sharing your expertise to mentor other Lighting Artists and to help them solve problems, as well as representing a model for proactive, supportive collaboration across all other departments of the studio

Great to Have:

• Passion for deeply narrative driven games, particularly First Person Shooters.
• Additional traditional art, lighting, or cinematography background
• Experience working effectively and collaborative with a diverse mix of internal and distributed teams

The pay range for this position in Massachusetts at the start of employment is expected to be between $130,900 and $170,120 per Year. However, base pay offered is based on market location, and may vary further depending on individualized factors for job candidates, such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and other objective business considerations. Subject to those same considerations, the total compensation package for employees in regular roles may also include other elements, including a bonus and/or equity awards, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, provided that temporary or intern roles will not be eligible for many of these payments or benefits. Details of participation in compensation and benefit plans (if applicable) will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.If hired, employee will be in an ~at-will position~ and the company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation or benefit program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, company or individual department/team performance, and market factors

As an equal opportunity employer, Ghost Story Games, LLC (“Ghost Story”) is committed to fostering and celebrating the diverse thoughts, cultures, and backgrounds of its talent, partners, and communities throughout its organization. Consistent with this commitment, Ghost Story does not discriminate or retaliate against any employee or job applicant because of their race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity), national origin, age, disability, and genetic information (including family medical history), or on the basis of any other trait protected by applicable law. If you need to report a concern or have questions regarding Ghost Story’s equal opportunity commitment, please contact [e-mail].