Art Lead

About the role

The Art Lead position at Gardens Interactive is responsible for leading and managing the art organization across current and future games. This role includes owning the health, performance, and effectiveness of the art team across various disciplines, such as Environment, Concept, Character, VFX, and Animation. The Art Lead also manages discipline leads and directly manages individual contributors where a dedicated lead isn't yet in place.

Responsibilities

• Lead and manage the art team across all sub-disciplines: Environment, Concept, Character, VFX, Animation, and other art functions.
• Manage, mentor, and develop discipline leads, holding them accountable for the health and delivery of their teams; directly manage individual contributors where a dedicated lead isn't yet in place.
• Build a culture of ownership, clarity, constructive feedback, and continuous improvement across the art team.
• Partner with the Art Director to keep art priorities aligned with the game's vision.
• Work through cross-disciplinary blockers with Design, Engineering, and Production.
• Coach discipline leads through feedback and career development.

Requirements

• 6+ years of professional experience in game-development art production, with multiple shipped titles as an artist or art leader.
• Significant experience managing, mentoring, and developing artists and art leads, including building and evolving teams and holding people accountable for performance and delivery.
• A strong understanding of the responsibilities, workflows, and dependencies across multiple game-art disciplines.
• A strong product judgment and a demonstrated ability to stay closely engaged with a game throughout development, evaluating art in the context of gameplay, player experience, and production scope.
• A strong cross-functional judgment and communication skills, with the ability to synthesize feedback, navigate disagreement, and balance the needs of the art organization with those of the overall product.
• Experience working with external outsourcing vendors.
• Comfortable operating both strategically and tactically, taking ownership without requiring constant direction.

Qualifications

• A strong understanding of Environment, Character, Concept, VFX, Animation, Technical Art, and related art-development pipelines.
• Experience with stylized art and multiplayer games.

Skills

• Strong leadership and management skills.
• Excellent communication and collaboration abilities.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Experience with game development tools and pipelines.

Benefits

• Competitive salaries and pay transparency.
• Stock options.
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage (100% for individuals, 90% for dependents).
• Life insurance, short-term and long-term disability, and additional benefits.
• 401(k) contributions (U.S.) / RRSP + DPSP contributions (Canada).
• Paid parental leave.

Schedule

This is a primarily sedentary, remote role requiring the ability to remain stationary and perform computer-based work for extended periods, including sustained use of monitors, keyboards, mice, and game controllers for a minimum of six hours per day.

Pay

$165.6K - $206.4K