Principal Technical Material/Shader Artist

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.