Design Director shaping gameplay vision and leading the design team for 7 Days to Die. Collaborating with creative leadership and managing the design quality, systems, and player experience.
About the role
- Studio Art Manager enhancing creative talent and ensuring quality in game art production at Velan Studios. Leading mentorship and strategic vision for art teams in Toronto and Troy studios.
Responsibilities
- As a key partner in building our next generation of creative talent, the Studio Art Manager will work closely with senior people managers to empower their project leads, strengthen feedback loops and ensure the department maintains a strong bench of artists ready for new challenges.
- Lead and coach senior people managers, ensuring they in turn mentor leads and sub-leads with clarity and consistency.
- Champion career development frameworks, succession planning, and skill-building initiatives to strengthen the internal talent pipeline.
- Setting job expectations for disciplines at every stage; from job postings, hiring, onboarding, year-end reviews, while ensuring clarity and consistency across people leaders.
- Partner with Studio Leadership and Production to define the long-term art vision, standards, and goals for both locations.
- Oversee art resource planning and headcount allocation across all active projects, balancing creative ambitions with production needs.
- Collaborating closely with Game Directors, Art Directors, and department leads to uphold the studio’s visual identity and artistic direction.
- Identify and drive departmental initiatives that improve artistic quality, workflow efficiency, and cross-discipline collaboration.
- Serve as a cultural leader across both locations, building trust, alignment, and shared artistic standards.
- Promote strong communication channels across teams and studios to ensure consistency and cohesion in the art organization.
- Model empathy, inclusion, and leadership transparency as cornerstones of team culture.
Requirements
- 10+ years of experience in game art leadership or related creative leadership roles.
- Experience managing multi-level hierarchies within a production environment, with a total team size of 50+ artists.
- Proven ability to balance creative excellence with operational decision-making.
- Strong understanding of art production pipelines, tools, and resource planning.
- Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills; able to inspire, influence, and develop others.
- Has shipped multiple games in an art-focused role: concept, character, environment, illustration, world-building, etc.
- Experience using Unity, Unreal, or proprietary engines, software, and tools.
- Experience with modern workflows and knowledge of the entire lifecycle of a project, for current AAA games both large and small.
- Excellent collaboration and both written and verbal communication skills.
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