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AI Scene Lighting Intelligence Developer

Maya Patel

Full-time · Job · Los_Angeles

About the role

A VFX lighting TD spends 2 weeks manually matching the lighting of a CG character to the live-action plate it is composited into. The reference is there — it is visible in every frame of the background plate. The challenge is extracting an accurate lighting model from that reference and applying it consistently across hundreds of character renders at different positions and angles in the scene. We build AI tooling for VFX and animation pipelines. Our lighting intelligence system estimates scene illumination from live-action footage and transfers it to CG elements automatically. The current system handles simple one or two-light setups well. Complex outdoor environments with sun, sky, bounce light, and practical sources are where accuracy degrades. You will work on the illumination estimation model: improving accuracy on complex multi-source environments, handling HDR estimation for specular surfaces, and building the uncertainty quantification that tells lighting artists where to apply manual corrections versus where the AI estimate is trustworthy enough to keep.

Responsibilities

  • Improve illumination estimation accuracy for complex multi-source outdoor scenes
  • Build HDR lighting model extraction from standard dynamic range footage
  • Develop uncertainty quantification for illumination estimates
  • Design per-frame consistency checks ensuring lighting estimates are temporally stable
  • Build evaluation benchmarks comparing AI estimates against manually crafted lighting setups
  • Integrate with standard VFX pipeline formats: EXR, OpenEXR, USD

Requirements

  • 5+ years in computer vision or graphics ML with rendering, VFX, or lighting experience
  • Experience with intrinsic image decomposition, illumination estimation, or inverse rendering
  • Strong PyTorch skills and understanding of physically-based rendering concepts
  • Familiarity with VFX pipeline tools and formats
  • Portfolio or publications in scene understanding, lighting, or rendering AI

Benefits

  • Fully remote
  • Health, dental, and vision
  • $4,000 annual equipment and learning budget
  • GPU cluster access
  • Equity participation

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Categories

AI & Machine Learning Engineers Automation & AI Workflows

Skills

python pytorch computer vision docker gcp

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Job Type

Full-time

Level

Senior

Language

English

Salary Range

$130k – $160k / year

AI Expertise

AI & Machine Learning Engineers Automation & AI Workflows

Skills

python pytorch computer vision docker gcp

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