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Art Lead
Second Unit Games | Remote - U.S.
Second Unit is looking for an experienced Art Lead for client game projects.
This is a hands-on role. You'll lead artists, but you'll also make art. We're looking for someone who is comfortable setting visual direction, reviewing work, mentoring artists, solving production problems, and jumping in to create or finish assets when that's what the project needs.
If you're a senior artist who enjoys leading people but doesn't want to spend all day in meetings, reviews, and schedules, this may be a good fit.
What You'll Do
Our project teams will typically be small, cross-disciplinary groups of approximately 6-15 developers, depending on the scope of the engagement. You'll lead the artists assigned to the project while working with other discipline leads, the client's art leadership, and the rest of the development team.
You'll lead the artists assigned to the project while continuing to contribute directly. That includes establishing and maintaining the visual bar, reviewing work, estimating and planning art tasks, assigning work, identifying risks early, and solving the day-to-day problems that come with getting game art into a shipping product.
The actual work will vary by project. You might be creating or finishing assets, reviewing character or environment work, helping an artist solve a difficult problem, working with engineering and technical art on performance or implementation issues, and figuring out how to match an established game's visual style and pipeline.
You'll mentor both senior and junior artists and help onboard new team members. We expect our leads to set the standard for the quality of the work and for how the team communicates, collaborates, and responds to feedback.
You'll Help Us Win the Work, Too
Our leads are involved before a project starts, not just after the work has been signed.
You'll participate in client discovery and planning meetings to understand the game, its visual direction, the existing art pipeline, and what the client needs from us. You'll help evaluate scope, identify production risks, estimate the work, and determine what kind of team we need.
You will be an integral part of our initial client conversations. We believe our clients should meet the people who will actually be responsible for the work. You should be comfortable talking with a client's art directors, discipline leads, and studio leadership, asking detailed questions, discussing quality expectations and production challenges, and explaining how our team will work with them.
What We're Looking For
There are two experience requirements for this position that are important to us:
you've helped ship a major game, and you've worked on a game after it shipped.
You must have:

• Personally contributed art to the development and launch of at least one AA or AAA game
• Experience supporting a released game and delivering live or post-launch content
• Strong hands-on game art experience and the ability to create production-quality work
• Experience leading and mentoring other artists, both junior and senior
• Experience reviewing work, giving clear feedback, and maintaining a consistent quality bar across a team
• A solid understanding of game-art pipelines and the technical requirements of getting assets into a game
• The ability to estimate awork, identify production risks, and communicate issues clearly
• Experience working across disciplines with design, engineering, animation, technical art, and production
• The judgment and communication skills to work directly with client art leadership, discipline leads, and studio leadership

You do not need to have "Lead" in your title. If you're a senior artist who has been taking on leadership responsibilities, mentoring other artists, reviewing work, and taking responsibility for the quality of more than your own assets, we're interested in talking to you.
Professional experience with tools such as Maya, Blender, ZBrush, Substance, Photoshop, Unreal Engine, Unity, or proprietary engines and art pipelines is useful. We're less concerned with checking every software box than we are with finding someone who understands how game art gets made, integrated, reviewed, optimized, and shipped.
What We Want to See From You
When you apply, we want to see your work.
In the application process we'll include a place for you to tell us which games you've shipped, and what you were responsible for. If you've supported a game after launch, tell us about the DLC, live content, characters, environments, cosmetics, or other post-launch work you helped deliver.
We'd also like to understand where you've led. Tell us about teams or artists you've helped manage or mentor, how you've handled reviews and feedback, and where you've been responsible for maintaining the quality and consistency of work beyond your own.
Your portfolio doesn't need to represent every art discipline. We want to see what you do well, along with evidence that you understand the broader art-production process well enough to lead artists working in disciplines outside your own specialty.
We care much more about what you actually made than what your title was.
What This Role Isn't
This isn't an Art Director position where your primary job is defining a vision and reviewing other people's work.
You won't be expected to personally be the best character artist, environment artist, animator, technical artist, and VFX artist on the team. You will be expected to understand those disciplines well enough to lead a multidisciplinary art team, recognize problems, maintain the quality bar, and know when you need deeper expertise from someone else.
Your job is to make sure the art on your project gets done well. You'll lead the work, and you'll do the work.
About Second Unit
Keep your next game moving. Keep your current game thriving.
Second Unit works with established game studios that need to keep supporting successful games while their internal teams move on to what's next.
Our U.S.-based teams work directly inside our clients' development pipelines and take responsibility for defined pieces of their roadmap, including DLC, live content, gameplay features, systems, and other player-facing work.
Our teams are led by experienced developers who are still actively involved in making the game.
How We Work
Second Unit is a remote-first U.S. studio.
Our primary employment model is W-2 hourly.
You'll be paid for every hour you work, including approved overtime when applicable. Because our work depends on client projects, there may be periods between assignments when hours are not available. We want to be clear about that from the beginning.
While assigned to client work, eligible employees receive monthly healthcare and hardware stipends.
You'll use your own development workstation, provided it meets Second Unit's hardware and security requirements. We provide the dedicated project environment and security configuration used for company work. Individual clients may require additional security measures or virtual development environments.
The Person We're Looking For
You still like making game art. You like helping other artists get better. You can give direct feedback without making it personal, and you can take feedback the same way. You raise problems early. You know when something needs another pass and when it's good enough to ship.
When the team runs into a difficult art or production problem, you're more likely to get involved than stand back and manage it from a distance. And after years in game development, you still enjoy seeing something you worked on make it into the hands of players.
If that sounds familiar, we'd like to see what you've made, what you've shipped, and what you worked on after launch.