Associate Art Director (Sports Games)

Location: Hybrid role in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Salary: CAD $123,500–$182,780 per year at the start of employment; total compensation may also include bonus, equity awards, and benefits.

Company

Small Axe Studios is hirify.global’s stand-alone game development studio creating a new sports franchise and brand-new IP.

What you will do

• Translate Art Direction’s vision into execution packages, visual targets, reference materials, and acceptance criteria for internal teams and external partners.
• Own and champion the game’s visual direction during production across environments, characters, lighting, and technical art.
• Coordinate multidisciplinary teams and external vendors, maintain visual cohesion, provide consistent feedback, and close communication gaps.
• Partner with Production and art leads on scope, priorities, dependencies, capacity, and realistic project roadmaps.
• Collaborate with Art Direction, Technical Art, Engineering, product owners, and discipline leads to resolve visual and pipeline challenges.
• Represent art and technical art teams, surface staffing and delivery risks, communicate decisions, and support team growth and culture.

Requirements

• Experience leading multidisciplinary game art teams, with a portfolio demonstrating strong visual judgment and cohesive execution across environments, characters, and lighting.
• Ability to translate creative direction into actionable visual targets, reference packages, and clear acceptance criteria.
• Experience guiding external production partners, delivering consistent feedback, and maintaining quality across multiple workstreams.
• Strong production judgment, including assessing scope, dependencies, and team capacity and building realistic plans with Production and art leads.
• Practical understanding of real-time art pipelines and performance constraints, with experience partnering with Technical Art and Engineering to resolve visual challenges.
• Clear, proactive communication connecting leadership, discipline leads, and artists, surfacing risks early and turning decisions into action.
• Supportive leadership style with experience mentoring artists, developing teams, and building a collaborative culture.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative, player-first environment focused on creative collaboration, technical excellence, and bold ideas.
• Opportunity to help build a new sports franchise and shape a brand-new IP from the ground up.
• Regular employees may receive bonus and/or equity awards alongside medical, financial, and other benefits; temporary and intern roles may not be eligible for many of these benefits.
• Reasonable accommodation is available for qualified individuals with disabilities during application, interview, and employment processes.

Hiring process

• hirify.global Games and its studios do not use instant messaging apps or personal email accounts to contact candidates or conduct interviews; official email communication uses hirify.global.com accounts.