Lead Lighting Artist

 

Job Title	Lead Lighting Artist
Department	Art and Animation
Location(s)	Brighton (travel as required)
Reports To	(Franchise) Art Director
Job Type (Permanent, fixed term, internship)	Permanent

Who We Are

Home to the award winning Mafia franchise, our team are united by passion for rich narrative storytelling, cinematic presentation and AAA craft. We're looking for creative minds and driven professionals who share our love of story, style, and adventure. If you're ready to help shape the next generation of narrative driven games, we'd love to hear from you.

 

Job Summary 

• We are looking for a Lead Lighting Artist to help shape and deliver world-class real-time lighting across gameplay, cinematics, and key marketing assets. 
• This role sits at the intersection of creativity and technical expertise, using Unreal Engine 5 to create lighting that enhances atmosphere, storytelling, and player experience while meeting performance goals.
• Reporting to the Art Director, the Lead Lighting Artist will work closely with Engineering, and the other Art Disciplines, playing a key role in defining lighting solutions that are both visually ambitious and technically robust.

 

Duties and Responsibilities  

• Drive Lighting Quality & Vision

  • Help define and execute the lighting vision in alignment with the game’s art direction.
  • Set and maintain lighting standards and best practices to ensure a consistent, high-quality visual bar.
  • Create lighting that supports mood, composition, readability, and emotional impact across a wide range of content.
  
  

  Gameplay, Cinematic & Marketing Lighting

  
  
  • Lead lighting for real-time gameplay and in-engine cinematics, ensuring a cohesive visual experience.
  • Collaborate with a cross-disciplinary team on the creation of high-end marketing and promotional assets, contributing ideas and helping deliver polished, visually striking results.
  • Adapt lighting solutions to work effectively across gameplay and cinematics.
  
  

  Unreal Engine 5 Leadership

  
  
  • Act as a go-to expert for UE5 lighting, with hands-on experience using systems such as Lumen, Virtual Shadow Maps, exposure, and post-processing.
  • Use UE5’s lighting capabilities to push visual quality while maintaining performance and stability.
  • Partner with Technical Art and Engineering to explore new features and improve lighting workflows.
  
  

  Technical Collaboration & Performance

  
  
  • Build strong working relationships with Engineering teams to develop and refine lighting solutions.
  • Take ownership of lighting performance, identifying potential issues early and helping guide effective solutions.
  • Contribute to the ongoing improvement of lighting pipelines, tools, and debugging processes.
  
  

  Lead, Support & Mentor

  • Provide clear artistic and technical guidance to lighting artists through reviews, feedback, and hands-on support.
  • Help plan and scope lighting work, identify dependencies, and support the team in hitting quality and production goals.
  • Be an active advocate for lighting quality and consistency throughout development.

 

Essential Skills, Attributes and Experience

• Lighting & Unreal Engine Expertise

  • A strong portfolio showcasing high-quality real-time lighting in Unreal Engine, including gameplay, cinematics, and marketing assets.
  • Experience in a Lead Lighting Artist role on shipped titles.
  • Deep hands-on experience lighting complex scenes using UE5.
    
    

  Creative & Technical Balance

  • Excellent understanding of lighting fundamentals such as color, contrast, exposure, composition, and mood.
  • Strong technical awareness of real-time rendering constraints, profiling, and optimization.
  • Strong understanding of grading and colour pipelines, from content creation through in-engine rendering and final output.
    
    

  UE5 Savvy

  • Deep, practical knowledge of Unreal Engine 5 lighting systems and workflows.
    Comfortable working closely with engineers to balance artistic goals with technical realities.
    
    

  HDR Sky Capture & Real-World Reference

  • Previous experience capturing, processing, and implementing HDR skies / sky domes.
  • A solid understanding of physically based lighting and real-world lighting reference.
    
    

  Collaboration & Communication

  • Clear communicator who can explain lighting intent to both artistic and technical audiences.
  • Enjoys collaborating, sharing ideas, and helping elevate the work of the team.

 

Highly Desirable 

• Experience contributing to high-quality in-engine marketing or promotional assets.
• Familiarity with custom or advanced rendering pipelines in Unreal Engine.
• A strong eye for cinematic lighting, composition, and visual storytelling.
• Photography and studio lighting skills

 

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Hangar 13  prides itself on the diversity of its team members, partners, and communities.  For this reason, we remain committed to providing equal employment opportunity in all aspects of the employment relationship, from recruitment and hiring through compensation, benefits, discipline and termination.  

As an equal opportunity employer, we are also committed to ensuring that qualified individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation(s) to participate in the job application and/or interview process, to perform their essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.  Please contact us if you need to request reasonable accommodation.

SECURITY NOTICE -  We have recently been made aware of increasing occurrences of bad actors posing as company HR personnel to gain information from "potential candidates", in the form of job interviews and offers. These scams can be quite sophisticated and appear legitimate.

Please know that Hangar 13 and 2K never use instant messaging apps to contact prospective employees or to conduct interviews.

If you believe you have been a victim of such a scam, you may fill out a complaint form at https://complaint.ic3.gov/ and https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ detailing as much as possible. We are taking these matters very seriously and apologize for any inconvenience.

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