Art Director (Unreal Engine)

Location: Hybrid, Sheffield, United Kingdom; studios also based in Leamington

Company

Develops an authentic boxing video game and proprietary technology for bringing the sport to life in an interactive experience.

What you will do

• Define and champion the artistic vision, visual identity, quality standards, style guides, and benchmarks for the studio’s games.
• Provide strategic leadership across Character Art, Environments, Animation, VFX, UI/UX, and Technical Art.
• Lead creative reviews and ensure consistent visual quality, gameplay support, authenticity, immersion, and player experience.
• Plan and oversee art production, pipelines, milestones, resources, prioritisation, quality assurance, and delivery risks.
• Partner with Creative, Design, Engineering, Technical Art, and Production leadership to balance artistic ambition with technical feasibility, performance, scope, and schedules.
• Develop the Art function through recruitment, mentoring, succession planning, performance management, external partner oversight, and continuous improvement.

Requirements

• Extensive games industry experience, including significant experience in senior Art leadership roles such as Art Director, Associate Art Director, or equivalent.
• Proven experience defining and delivering a cohesive artistic vision for high-quality, commercially released games.
• Exceptional artistic judgement and strong understanding of composition, colour, lighting, character design, environments, animation, and visual storytelling.
• Demonstrable experience leading multidisciplinary Art teams and managing, mentoring, and developing Art Leads and senior creative professionals.
• Strong knowledge of modern game development pipelines, asset production workflows, and the interdependencies between Art, Design, and Engineering.
• Significant experience with Unreal Engine, ideally Unreal Engine 5, including its visual capabilities, rendering technologies, and production constraints.
• Strong understanding of real-time rendering, materials, lighting, shaders, optimisation, and platform performance.
• Experience establishing artistic benchmarks, style guides, creative review processes, performance expectations, and accountable high-performing teams.
• Experience balancing artistic ambition with technical feasibility, schedules, resources, commercial requirements, resource planning, forecasting, prioritisation, and delivery oversight.
• Proven ability to collaborate with Creative Directors, Technical Directors, Producers, and other senior development leaders; excellent communication, presentation, stakeholder management, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
• Experience managing external Art partners, outsourcing vendors, and content quality assurance processes.

Nice to have

• Experience delivering visually ambitious AAA or AA games for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
• Extensive Unreal Engine 5 experience with Nanite, Lumen, Niagara, and advanced material and lighting workflows.
• Experience directing high-fidelity character art, realistic environments, animation, cinematic presentation, realism, authenticity, character likeness, and visual fidelity.
• Familiarity with character creation pipelines, facial animation, motion capture, rigging, and deformation systems.
• Experience addressing rendering, visual performance, asset optimisation, production milestones from Alpha through final release, and scalable pipelines across multiple projects.
• Experience with international outsourcing partners, external development studios, studio-level strategic planning, organisational development, and long-term capability building.

Culture & Benefits

• Flexible working hours and patterns, with certain hybrid models available.
• 23 days of annual leave plus bank holidays, increasing with service up to 30 days; Christmas shutdown and holiday exchange programme.
• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay, private healthcare including optical and dental care, company sick pay, wellbeing days, 24/7 doctors, and an Employee Assistance Programme.
• Learning days, relocation benefits, technology salary-sacrifice scheme up to £750, electric car scheme, and discretionary bonus.
• Friendly studios with free refreshments, free parking at the Sheffield site, team outings, wrap parties, and an individual entertainment budget for team events.