Senior Lighting Artist - The Sims

Electronic Arts creates next-level entertainment experiences that inspire players and fans around the world. As a Senior Lighting Artist, you will own and elevate real-time lighting quality across characters, environments, and gameplay, collaborating closely with Art Direction and various teams to refine workflows and improve lighting systems.


Responsibilities

  • Improve the quality and visual standards for lighting to achieve Art Direction's visual targets across characters, environments, and gameplay modes
  • Create high-quality, real-time lighting solutions using physically based rendering within a proprietary engine
  • Collaborate with Technical Art, Art Direction, Rendering Engineers, Modelling teams, VFX, and other discipline leads to develop and refine a cohesive lighting vision
  • Prototype and evaluate lighting environments in partnership with engineering and technical partners, iterating on new features, workflows, and lighting systems
  • Use internal debug tools and custom viewers to analyse lighting behaviour, identify rendering or material issues, and validate lighting correctness
  • Establish and maintain physically based workflows, lighting best practices, and reference rigs
  • Review work delivered by engineering partners and participate in interdisciplinary critiques with Art Direction
  • Collaborate with Technical Art on technology requirements, advocating for process, tool, and aesthetic improvements that enhance visual quality
  • Document and provide training on lighting aesthetics and tools

Skills

  • 4+ years of production experience as a Lighting Artist on shipped titles, from pre-production through final delivery on a AAA title
  • Strong understanding of PBR lighting theory, real-time rendering techniques, and physically based materials (including subsurface scattering)
  • Familiarity with baked and real-time lighting workflows for PC and console titles
  • Experience with lighting optimization, profiling, and performance tuning to stay within technical budgets across multiple platforms
  • Comfort working in proprietary engines, internal debug tools, and evolving pipelines
  • Understanding of spatial composition and lighting techniques that drive mood, tone, and narrative within a scene (natural lighting, key/ fill, rim)
  • Demonstrated understanding of rendering principles for skin, hair, clothing, and environmental materials
  • Experience collaborating with object, character, and environment modelers; VFX artists; Technical Artists; and rendering engineers to develop tools, pipelines, and new lighting solutions
  • Proficiency with industry-standard art tools such as Maya, Substance Painter/Designer, ZBrush, and Photoshop
  • Strong interdisciplinary and technical communication abilities
  • A demonstrated sense of color theory, color grading, and correction
  • Experience with shader authoring or tuning shading models

Benefits

  • Paid time off (3 weeks per year to start)
  • 80 hours per year of sick time
  • 16 paid company holidays per year
  • 10 weeks paid time off to bond with baby
  • Medical/dental/vision insurance
  • Life insurance
  • Disability insurance
  • 401(k) to regular full-time employees
  • Vacation (3 weeks per year to start)
  • 10 days per year of sick time
  • Paid top-up to EI/QPIP benefits up to 100% of base salary when you welcome a new child (12 weeks for maternity, and 4 weeks for parental/adoption leave)
  • Extended health/dental/vision coverage
  • Life insurance
  • Disability insurance
  • Retirement plan to regular full-time employees

Company Overview

  • Electronic Arts creates next-level entertainment experiences that inspire players and fans around the world. Here, everyone is part of the story. It was founded in 1982, and is headquartered in Redwood City, California, USA, with a workforce of 10001+ employees. Its website is https://www.ea.com.

  • Company H1B Sponsorship

  • Electronic Arts (EA) has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 139 in 2025, 105 in 2024, 207 in 2023, 233 in 2022, 198 in 2021, 145 in 2020. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.

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