Lighting Artist Contractor (6 months)

Job Title: Lighting Artist Contractor (6 months)
Team: Art & Animation
Hybrid Working Status: Fully remote available

Studio Overview 

We are Sports Interactive  

The gaming studio behind: ⚽ Football Manager.

Founded in 1994, Sports Interactive became a wholly owned subsidiary of SEGA Europe in 2006. Based at the Here East technology hub in Stratford, East London, the SI team continues to expand as we bring our titles to an ever-growing audience across an increasing variety of platforms.

To support our growth, we welcome the opportunity to connect with passionate people with the drive to match our ambitions and initiative to realise your individual potential. 

Position Overview

We are looking for a Lighting Artist to join the Art & Animation team as a Contractor. They will play a key role in defining and enhancing the game’s visual atmosphere by implementing and refining lighting across various scenes and environments. The ideal candidate will possess a keen eye for colour, contrast, and visual composition, combined with a strong technical foundation in Unity’s lighting systems. This role will collaborate closely with the environment and all tech teams to ensure that lighting enhances both gameplay and aesthetics, delivering a cohesive visual experience across the project.

Key Responsibilities

Lighting Setup and Adjustments:

• Set up and maintain lighting across environments, character scenes, and cutscenes in Unity, ensuring they align with the game’s artistic vision and technical requirements.

• Make real-time adjustments to lighting setups based on team feedback, optimizing performance while preserving visual fidelity.

Atmospheric Lighting and Mood Creation:

• Work closely with the Head of Art & Animation and Environment Artists to develop atmospheric lighting that enhances the visuals within the game.

• Use lighting creatively to reinforce gameplay, and player immersion across different game settings.

Collaborate with Art and Technical Teams:

• Partner with environment artists and technical artists to ensure lighting works seamlessly with other visual components, enhancing cohesion and consistency in scenes.

• Coordinate with technical art to balance visual quality and performance, ensuring lighting is efficient for real-time performance on targeted platforms.

Scene Optimisation and Debugging:

• Identify and resolve technical and performance issues related to lighting, such as real-time shadows, global illumination, and post-processing, using profiling tools and techniques in Unity.

• Collaborate with engineers to debug any lighting-related issues, ensuring assets meet performance and quality standards across devices.

Lighting Tool Usage and Shader Knowledge:

• Leverage Unity's lighting tools within URP, such as light probes, reflection probes, and lighting volumes, to achieve realistic lighting effects that align with project goals.

• Basic shader knowledge, with the ability to adjust or customize shaders in Unity as necessary to enhance visual effects related to lighting is a benefit.

Process Adherence and Detail Orientation:

• Follow established workflows and best practices, avoiding ad-hoc solutions in favour of structured approaches that can be easily maintained and scaled.

• Ensure all lighting assets and methods adhere to the project’s technical and aesthetic standards, with detailed documentation for future updates.

Lighting Polish and Review:

• Continuously refine lighting elements through feedback cycles, ensuring consistency with the project’s vision and maintaining a high standard of visual quality.

• Proactively share progress with the art team, being open to feedback and ready to iterate to align with broader art and design goals.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• 2-3 years of experience in lighting for real-time environments, preferably within a game development setting, using Unity.
• Demonstrated experience in lighting environments for interactive media, with a strong portfolio showcasing work on completed games or similar projects.
• Proficiency in Unity’s lighting systems, including global illumination, lightmapping, post-processing, and environment lighting techniques.
• Familiarity with profiling and optimisation techniques, ensuring real-time lighting runs efficiently across various hardware using URP.
• Knowledge of basic shader adjustment in Unity for visual effects related to lighting.
• A solid understanding of colour theory, composition, and visual storytelling.
• Strong sense of mood and atmosphere creation through lighting, able to bring environments to life with attention to detail and thematic consistency.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to work collaboratively and respond to feedback constructively.
• Experience with other industry-standard software and tools, such as Photoshop or Substance for texture support related to lighting.
• Understanding of URP in Unity, with experience in leveraging this for high-quality lighting.
• Familiarity with procedural lighting tools or dynamic lighting systems.

We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from any relevant candidate irrespective of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, religion, or belief.  

SI is proudly a Disability Confident Committed employer, and we are dedicated to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible. Our studio has disabled access and facilities but please ensure you advise us if you require any other reasonable adjustments to be made to support you during the recruitment process. 

Our Values:

Keep collaborating: Teamwork wins titles - Here, ideas belong to everyone, whatever department you’re part of. Collaboration lets us score more as a team than we could individually. 

Be flexible: We think fast and adapt faster. The football and entertainment worlds never stand still, so we keep progressing and switching things up to stay ahead. 

Stay Tenacious: We don’t overlook the details. Everything we do is about producing the best game possible, in other words, never settle. 

Show Ambition: Let your drive lead the way - Your individual outlook can give everyone the edge. Make the studio’s purpose personal and let your drive lead the way. 

Bring the Passion: Have fun doing your thing - Don’t be fooled, what we do is not a game. Making our players’ passion come to life is our passion. 

Consider the Bigger Picture: Keep things in perspective - We want our impact to be a positive one. From built-in work/life balance to initiatives covering the most important topics of today, we have what matters in focus.