Principal Material Artist - Hard Surface

Lighthouse Games is a new AAA studio in Leamington Spa. We are defined by our pedigree of talent and serious ambition to build a new best-in-class game. When you join us at Lighthouse, you’ll create the best work of your career within a collaborative, hybrid working environment. You’ll learn from the best and work alongside the future greats of the gaming industry.

As a Principal Technical Material/Shader Artist, you will lead the quality, direction and technical standards of material and shader creation across all types of 3D artwork. Combining a strong artistic eye with deep technical expertise, you will create scalable material systems and workflows that deliver visually compelling content within the performance requirements of a real-time AAA production.

Key Duties Include

• Define and champion the technical and artistic quality bar for materials and shaders.
• Design, develop and maintain complex Unreal Engine Master Materials, shader systems and reusable material functions.
• Create benchmark-quality PBR materials and work with Art Leadership, Artists, Technical Artists and Render Engineers to balance realism, flexibility and performance.
• Establish scalable material pipelines, profile and optimise shader content, and support other artists through guidance and best practices.

Requirements

• Extensive senior or principal-level experience developing, implementing and optimising complex real-time materials and shaders in Unreal Engine.
• Expert knowledge of Unreal Engine’s Material Editor, including Master Materials, material functions, parameterisation, layered materials and scalable shader architecture.
• Deep understanding of real-time rendering, PBR workflows, lighting, texture authoring and shader performance.
• Advanced proficiency with tools such as Substance Designer and Substance Painter, supported by a strong portfolio and the ability to provide technical direction to other artists.

Desirable

• Experience with HLSL, custom shader code, procedural material techniques, scripting or automation.
• Knowledge of photogrammetry, photography, scanning or physically accurate material capture.

Benefits

• 25 Days Holiday, plus 1 day for your birthday
• Studio Shutdown between Christmas and New Year
• Discretionary Bonus Scheme
• Private Pension Scheme
• Private Healthcare
• Health and Well-Being Benefits
• Dental Care
• Optical treatments
• Mental Health Support

- Extensive experience developing, implementing, optimising and maintaining complex photorealistic PBR materials and shaders within Unreal Engine, operating at a senior or principal level. - Expert knowledge of hard-surface material creation, with a strong portfolio demonstrating highly realistic materials across vehicles, machinery, products or comparable assets. - Exceptional ability to study real-world reference and understand material construction, manufacturing processes, surface response, wear and variation in order to produce convincing results. - Advanced proficiency in content creation tools such as Substance Painter/Designer, Max/Maya/Blender, RealityCapture or equivalent software and pipelines. - Deep understanding of real-time rendering, lighting, PBR workflows, shader development and performance considerations, with the ability to solve complex artistic and technical problems. - Proven ability to influence quality across a team, communicate specialist knowledge effectively and provide guidance, mentorship and direction to other artists.