Principal Lighting Artist
Encino, CA
Art /
Full Time /
Hybrid
Giant Skull is an independent game studio on a mission to craft unforgettable single-player, gameplay-driven action-adventures in rich, immersive worlds. We are currently working on a new game set in the Dungeons and Dragons universe. We are highly collaborative and value empowering autonomy; each individual at Giant Skull has the opportunity to feel their impact across the game, studio, and team. If you’re ready to join a studio where every voice shapes the adventure, we’d love to create something extraordinary together.
The Role:
As a Principal Lighting Artist, you will help define and drive the lighting vision for our game - from visual tone and mood to player guidance and readability. Your work will shape how players experience the world in our games, through atmosphere, color, contrast, and emotion. You’ll collaborate closely across disciplines to deliver high-quality real-time lighting that brings the beauty and immersion of our game environments to life.
Impact and Ownership
- You will help establish and execute the lighting quality bar and vision, creating dramatic, immersive, and intentional lighting across environments, characters, and gameplay moments.
- You will collaborate closely with art direction, level design, and narrative to shape mood, guide players, and support storytelling through lighting.
- You will contribute to the development of lighting workflows and tools, partnering with engineering and tech art to support efficiency and visual quality.
- You will help ensure performance targets are met while achieving high-quality real-time lighting in UE5.
- You will mentor and support other artists, providing constructive feedback and technical insight to elevate the overall bar for lighting.
- Your influence will extend across the art department, helping shape both the look of the world and the processes we use to build it.
Qualifications
- You have 8+ years of experience as a lighting artist for games.
- Portfolio should showcase ability to produce compelling visuals through lighting, as well as a range of experience with lighting of environments, characters, and cinematics.
- You have a deep understanding of lighting principles, composition, color theory, and the emotional impact of light and shadow.
- You are highly skilled in lighting within game engines such as Unreal, including dynamic lighting, post-process effects, Lumen, and optimization strategies.
- You have experience lighting a wide variety of spaces from intimate interiors to expansive exteriors, from gameplay-driven areas to narrative moments.
- You can balance artistic goals with gameplay and technical constraints, ensuring lighting supports player readability, navigational flow, and real-time performance.
- You’re highly collaborative, able to partner with design, narrative, tech art, and engineering to align lighting with gameplay and worldbuilding.
- You are a proactive problem solver who brings clarity to ambiguous challenges and proposes solutions grounded in both creative vision and production reality.
- You value feedback, mentorship, and helping others grow.
- You may have experience contributing to lighting tools, pipeline development, or helping define lighting tone from early IP development.
Why Join Giant Skull
- You will collaborate with a passionate team of AAA veterans from studios like Epic, Respawn, Rocksteady, Riot, and more on exciting and ambitious gaming projects.
- You will enjoy a development process that balances collaborative teamwork with a high degree of individual autonomy.
- You will benefit from competitive compensation, access to cutting-edge technology and resources to support your work, as well as opportunities for career growth, personal and professional development.
- You will be shown trust and flexibility through remote or hybrid options, open PTO, and support for balancing work and personal life.
- Your ultimate impact will be unconstrained by your focus areas. You will have the opportunity to shape not only the game we are making but the foundation of our studio and development cultures, best practices, team collaboration, and beyond.
- You will add to a deeply inclusive workplace where every team member is valued and respected.
Compensation:
For this position, our target base salary range is 160k to 210k. Ranges may expand based on experience and location. Salary is just one aspect of our overall compensation package - we also offer opportunities for bonuses, retirement plan matching, and comprehensive benefits. We’re excited to share more about how we invest in our team during the interview process.
