Lead Lighting Artist

Keywords Studios is currently looking to expand its team in Southeast Asia. We're currently looking for an accomplished, enthusiastic and self-motivated Lead Lighting Artist to join our team working on an exciting, new and unannounced project.

A Lead Lighting Artist at Keywords Studios:

• Creates high-quality lighting that supports gameplay, narrative, mood, and artistic direction.
• Helps establish the visual and quality bar for lighting across the project.
• Builds, iterates, and optimises lighting setups for real-time environments and gameplay.
• Works closely with Art Direction, Environment Art, Level Design, and Technical Art to ensure lighting supports composition, atmosphere, and gameplay readability.
• Provides hands-on guidance, feedback, and mentoring to other artists working on lighting.
• Develops and maintains lighting passes, post-processing setups, and related environment settings.
• Troubleshoots lighting issues related to performance, consistency, and technical constraints across platforms.
• Contributes to visual benchmarks and helps establish effective lighting workflows and best practices.
• Supports planning and estimation while remaining actively involved in lighting production.

Requirements

• Proven experience as a Senior or Lead Lighting Artist on a shipped AAA or high-quality game project.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating lighting, composition, mood, and atmosphere.
• Strong understanding of lighting theory, colour, exposure, and real-time rendering.
• Proficiency with modern game engines such as Unreal, Unity, or proprietary engines.
• Good understanding of PBR workflows and how materials respond under different lighting conditions.
• Experience optimising lighting for real-time performance.
• Experience mentoring or providing artistic guidance to other artists.
• Ability to work collaboratively across disciplines and iterate quickly based on feedback.
• Experience with lighting tools, profiling, debugging, or workflow automation is an advantage.