Art Director | New Games

KING; City Of London; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading interactive entertainment company in London is seeking an Art Director to lead the visual direction for a new game. The role involves both creative oversight and hands-on production work in Unity, ensuring high-quality visual execution. Ideal candidates have extensive experience in mobile game development, a strong portfolio, and exceptional leadership skills. This position offers the opportunity to shape a market-leading live operations title.

Qualifications

• Proven experience as an Art Director or Senior Artist in mobile game development.
• Expert proficiency in Unity, including lighting and shaders.
• Strong understanding of real-time VFX and particle systems.

Responsibilities

• Set and champion the overall visual vision for the game.
• Work hands-on in Unity to prototype and implement visual solutions.
• Define and drive visual and VFX direction.

Skills

Art Director or Senior Artist experience

Expert proficiency in Unity

Strong understanding of real-time VFX

Prototyping and iterating skills

Portfolio showcasing hands-on work

Player-centered art direction understanding

Communication and leadership skills

Passion for craft and collaboration

Tools

Unity tools

Visual effects tools

Job description

Craft: Job Description:

Your Role Within the Kingdom

As an Art Director, you will lead the visual direction and creative quality on a newly developed game experience. You’ll define the artistic vision, set the visual tone, and ensure high-quality execution across all art disciplines from concept to live operations.

Unlike traditional leadership-only roles, this position blends strategic direction with hands-on craft. You’ll not only inspire teams through vision but also contribute directly to production through prototyping, VFX development, and Unity-based implementation.

This is a developmental project and so blends a need to develop the product and and the team itself, ensuring that the team develops into a fully realized organization capable scaling and supporting a successful market-leading live operations free-to-play mobile title.

You will partner closely with Product, Design, Tech, and Marketing to deliver visuals that are innovative, performant, and emotionally resonant, while staying true to the King brand.

Your Responsibilities

• Set and champion the overall visual vision, ensuring clarity and cohesion across all game elements.
• Work hands-on in Unity and King proprietary tools to prototype, refine, and implement visual solutions ensuring creative ideas are validated early and iterated quickly.
• Define and drive Visual and VFX direction, establishing quality benchmarks and ensuring effects enhance gameplay readability, feedback, and delight.
• Collaborate with tech art to push the limits of Unity’s and King's toolset, optimizing for both performance and visual fidelity.
• Establish efficient iteration loops, ensuring art direction evolves rapidly based on player data, team feedback, and market trends.
• Mentor and develop artists across disciplines, providing feedback on both creative and technical execution.
• Partner with the Design and Product leads to ensure the visual direction enhances the game’s emotional, narrative, and commercial goals.
• Balance creative ambition with production realities ensuring deliverables are high-quality, on-time, and optimized for live service workflows.
• Reports to the Creative/Product project lead.

Skills to Create Thrills

• Proven experience as an Art Director or Senior Artist in mobile game development.
• Expert proficiency in Unity, including lighting, materials, shaders, and visual effects.
• Strong understanding of real-time VFX, particle systems, and animation integration.
• Demonstrated ability to rapidly prototype and iterate within an engine environment.
• A solid portfolio showing a range of hands-on work from style exploration to polished implementation.
• Clear understanding of player-centered art direction balancing clarity, personality, and delight.
• Excellent communication and leadership skills, with experience guiding multi-disciplinary teams.
• A passion for craft, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Bonus Points

• Experience shipping live games with continuous content pipelines.
• Familiarity with performance profiling and optimization in Unity.
• Experience collaborating with motion design, animation, or cinematics teams.
• Strong grasp of visual storytelling and how art supports emotional pacing in gameplay.

About King

With a mission of Making the World Playful, King is a leading interactive entertainment company with more than 20 years of history of delivering some of the world’s most iconic games in the mobile gaming industry, including the world-famous Candy Crush franchise, as well as other mobile game hits such as Farm Heroes Sag. King games are played by more than 200 million monthly active users. King, part of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), has Kingsters in Stockholm, Malm, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Malta. More information can be found at King.com or by following us on LinkedIn, @lifeatking on Instagram, or @king_games on X.