Electronic Arts

Welcome to The Sims, home to tinkerers, craftspeople, & storytellers. Our drive is to inspire everyone to make a better world through creative play. As the developer of The Sims, we create games and experiences for millions of people around the world and are always looking for new ways to inspire our players. Maxis is a place where you can do what you love and help others grow while doing it; a place where your unique voice can be heard and seen. We put creativity and inclusivity at the core of our work and don't settle for seeing the world only as it is, but strive to build a world as it could be. Read on to see how you can join our team and dream big.

As a Senior Lighting Artist you will own and elevate real-time lighting quality across characters, environments, and gameplay, partnering closely with Art Direction to achieve the game's visual targets. You will collaborate with engineering, technical art, and content teams to refine workflows and improve lighting systems within a proprietary engine.

This role will report to the Development Director. 

Location: Vancouver, Austin, Kirkland or Redwood City; hybrid three days a week in studio. 

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.

Qualifications

• 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.

Materials required for Application

• A portfolio or reel demonstrating:

  • High-quality character, figurative, and environmental lighting

  • Examples showing lighting composition and mood in both natural and architectural scenes.