Lead Artist

Job Title: Lead Artist
Team: Art & Animation
Reporting into: Head of A&A

We are Sports Interactive 🎮

The gaming studio behind: ⚽ Football Manager.

Founded in 1994, Sports Interactive became a wholly owned subsidiary of SEGA Europe in 2006. Based at the Here East technology hub in Stratford, East London, the SI team continues to expand as we bring our titles to an ever-growing audience across an increasing variety of platforms.

To support our growth, we welcome the opportunity to connect with passionate people with the drive to match our ambitions and initiative to realise your individual potential.

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced and talented Lead Artist to oversee our Environment Art and Tech Art teams, while also focusing on elevating the visual quality of our project. This role will require expert knowledge in lighting, procedural workflows, and strong leadership skills to ensure a cohesive and stunning visual experience. The ideal candidate will be highly proficient in Unity and play a central role in shaping and executing the game’s overall art direction.
 
Key Responsibilities

Manage and Lead Teams:

• Oversee and guide both the Environment Art and Technical Art teams, ensuring artistic and technical excellence in every aspect of production.
  
• Provide mentorship and support to artists across both teams, fostering a collaborative and growth-oriented work environment.
  
• Facilitate regular team meetings, feedback sessions, and one-on-ones to keep artists aligned with the project’s vision

Collaboration and Cross-Disciplinary Work:

• Serve as a point of contact between the art department and other disciplines, such as design, engineering, and production, to ensure seamless integration of assets and visual elements.
  
• Collaborate closely with the Head of Art & Animation and other leads to ensure the artistic vision is maintained

Elevate Visual Quality:

• Take ownership of improving and maintaining a high standard of visual quality across the project, ensuring environments, lighting, and procedural assets meet artistic and technical goals.
  
• Establish visual benchmarks and develop best practices to ensure consistency and cohesion across all aspects of the game's environment art and lighting. 

Lighting & Procedural Systems:

• Oversee the development, optimisation, and implementation of lighting setups, ensuring they enhance the mood, atmosphere, and gameplay experience.
  
• Design and manage procedural workflows for the environment and technical art teams, ensuring efficient, scalable, and high-quality content creation.
  
• Provide knowledge in Unity’s lighting and potential procedural systems, ensuring that tools are effectively leveraged to push visual quality while optimising performance.

Art Pipeline Management:

• Collaborate with the Technical Art Team to optimise and enhance art production pipelines, ensuring efficient asset creation and integration into the game engine.
  
• Oversee the development of tools and processes to support procedural content creation, ensuring the team can deliver high-quality assets while maximising productivity. 

Performance Optimisation:

• Work closely with tech artists to ensure that visual quality improvements do not come at the expense of performance.
  
• Collaborate with the engineering team to troubleshoot and resolve any performance-related issues.

Strategic Art Planning:

• Help define project milestones and deliverables, ensuring that the Environment and Tech Art teams remain on schedule while maintaining the highest possible quality standards.
  
• Provide regular updates to senior management, highlighting key achievements, challenges, and risks related to the visual development of the game.

Vendor and Outsourcing Management:

• Manage and communicate with any external art vendors or outsourcing teams, ensuring their work aligns with the internal teams' artistic vision and quality standards.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• Minimum of 5+ years of professional experience in the game industry, with at least 1 year in a leadership or management role.
  
• Proven track record of delivering high-quality environment art, lighting, and procedural work in shipped AAA or high-quality games.
  
• Proficiency in Unity: Experience working with Unity’s lighting systems, procedural workflows, and tools for asset creation.
  
• Strong understanding of environment art, technical art, and how to optimise assets for real-time performance.
  
• Experience with lighting techniques (baked, real-time, dynamic) and the ability to set up lighting scenarios.
  
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to mentor, inspire, and develop talent across the art teams.
  
• Excellent cross-discipline communication skills, able to work effectively with game designers, engineers, and production teams.
  
• Demonstrated ability to solve complex visual and technical challenges, ensuring that the art pipeline is efficient and adaptable.
  
• A portfolio demonstrating expertise in environment art, lighting, and procedural work. Must include examples of projects where the candidate has led or significantly contributed to visual quality and team management.
  

Benefits of Working at Sports Interactive:

• A flexible working policy to best suit you and your team. 🏠 
  
• Subsidised mental health, therapy and coaching sessions are available. 😌
  
• Contributory Pension Scheme (up to 7% of annual salary). 🏦 
  
• Free onsite evening bar in the Sports Interactive London HQ. 🍹 
  
• A well-stocked breakfast bar with cereals, fruits, teas, and coffees. 🥣 
  
• Regular events in collaboration with our partnered football clubs. 🏟️ 
  
• Access to our on-site physical and massage therapist services. 💆 
  
• Multiple clubs and societies to join e.g., book club and art workshops. 🫶 
  
• Free access to games released under the SEGA Europe umbrella. 🕹️ 
  
• A range of Gym Membership options through our Benefits partners. 🏋️ 
  
• Fully Subsidised Healthcare and Dental Plans. 🦷 
  
• Free Travel Insurance for yourself and your family. ✈️ 
  
• A personalised football shirt upon passing probation. 👕
  

What is it like to work here? 

We approach everything with passion, whether that is making our mark on the gaming and football industries or doing our bit for the world around us. We want to share that outlook with everyone who shows up to work here each day.

For us, talent wins games, but teamwork wins titles. Collaboration is the key to constantly topping our best. We believe everyone matters, no matter which part of the business you are in, so we encourage and support our people in driving your own growth and realising your full potential. But, more than anything else, we are a team. A team with a down-to-earth dynamic, that has a lot of fun doing what we do.

And whether that’s technical tweaks or fine-tuning our creative process, everything is geared at producing the best game possible for our players. To do that, we need to be tenacious and move quickly, and not be afraid of switching things up. It is these principles that have enabled us to produce a game that has defined year after year, and that will continue to push us for many more to come.

Our flexible working culture gives you the opportunity to optimise your workload, with in-office, hybrid, and remote working options dependent on role. So, if you want a work/life balance, we are behind you. Because while we live to create extraordinary games, we know that is not all you have got going on. You can trust that we always keep things in perspective, fostering an environment where work can be more than just a job. We’re also a London Living Wage employer, boast one of the lowest staff turnover rates in the industry and are proud to have won the ‘Best Places to Work’ award by Gamesindustry.biz in large company category in 2023.

We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from any relevant candidate irrespective of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, religion, or belief.

SI is proudly a Disability Confident Committed employer, and we are dedicated to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible. Our studio has disabled access and facilities but please ensure you advise us if you require any other reasonable adjustments to be made to support you during the recruitment process.

Our Values: 

• Keep collaborating: Teamwork wins titles - Here, ideas belong to everyone, whatever department you’re part of. Collaboration lets us score more as a team than we could individually. 
  
• Be flexible: We think fast and adapt faster. The football and entertainment worlds never stand still, so we keep progressing and switching things up to stay ahead. 
  
• Stay Tenacious: We don’t overlook the details. Everything we do is about producing the best game possible, in other words, never settle. 
  
• Show Ambition: Let your drive lead the way - Your individual outlook can give everyone the edge. Make the studio’s purpose personal and let your drive lead the way. 
  
• Bring the Passion: Have fun doing your thing - Don’t be fooled, what we do is not a game. Making our players’ passion come to life is our passion. 
  
• Consider the Bigger Picture: Keep things in perspective - We want our impact to be a positive one. From built-in work/life balance to initiatives covering the most important topics of today, we have what matters in focus.