Founding Art Director

Young Founders School; New York, Northern (NY, KY); Hybrid; USD 250,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation covered

Hybrid NYC work model

Competitive base salary

Job summary

Founders School is recruiting an AI-first art director to lead the look of our entrepreneurship simulation game. You will own the art direction, build the generative pipelines (Scenario, ComfyUI, LoRA), and wire assets into our engine and authoring tools, collaborating closely with the Simulation Game Director and the Founding Technical Director.

You have shipped commercial games, written style bibles, and sit in the top tier of AI users in game art.

Qualifications

• Experience as an artist on commercial games, with lead or senior roles.
• Strong AI-assisted art workflow experience across concept to in-engine pipelines.
• Ability to create and maintain a visual style bible.

Responsibilities

• Define art direction and style for platform and simulations.
• Own visual identity and style bible for the project.
• Build end-to-end art workflows and integrate AI pipelines into the engine.
• Collaborate with Simulation Game Director and Technical Director.
• Prototype and ship generative assets across multiple game scenarios.

Skills

AI art expertise

Art direction

Game art pipeline

Lead artist experience

Tools

Scenario

ComfyUI

LoRA training

Job description

Founders School is a radical new program that launched in Fall 2026. Our promise is that students will make $1,000,000 in profit by graduation or their tuition is refunded. But not every student can afford to attend, and there are countless people outside that age range who want to learn these skills. That's where you come in.

We are building the first entrepreneurship simulation game. We expect this game to be played by hundreds of thousands of people, not just teenagers, within three years, and to become the canonical artifact of how to teach hard skills through play.

The first game is built with the IP of a business educator whose books have sold millions of copies.

We believe entrepreneurship is one of the most positive forces in the world. Our entire thesis is that teaching teenagers to build real, profitable businesses changes their trajectory and the trajectory of the country. We are unapologetically pro-business, pro-entrepreneurship, and pro-wealth-creation, and we want people who share that worldview. If you think "founder" is a dirty word or capitalism needs to be apologized for, you will hate every meeting we have.

We use AI across the full game development pipeline. We want people who are already obsessed with using AI to accelerate and enhance game development, and who are excited to create new kinds of game experiences with it. If you think AI is overhyped or a threat to your craft, this role is not for you.

What you will be doing

You are an AI-first art team of one: concept, characters, environments, props, UI and tech art. You work directly with the Simulation Game Director and the Founding Technical Director.

• Define the art direction and art style for the platform and game simulations, in collaboration with the Simulation Game Director.
• Own the visual identity and style bible for the platform and all game simulations.
• Build workflows for every stage of the art process.
• Build your own AI art pipeline (Scenario, ComfyUI, LoRAs, whatever works).
• Wire your pipeline into our engine and authoring tools.

Success at 6 months

• Deployed workflows generate art for multiple games at our quality bar, and at least 8 in 10 early teen playtesters call the look polished and exciting
• The first simulation looks like a finished, commercial-quality game
• Generative pipelines produce near-production-level assets in the house style, using LoRAs or equivalent

Success at 12 months

• Output: the pipeline supplies several simulations' worth of art at that bar, and a new sim's art takes weeks
• Integration: the workflows are wired into the team's tools with the technical director and the director, so anyone on the team can generate on-style assets without you in the loop
• The style is unmistakably ours: players recognize the game from a screenshot, and the fine-tuned models encode it

Candidate requirements

• You've been an artist on successful commercial games, ideally as a lead, on a large studio team, an indie team, or both.
• You know the full game art pipeline, from concept to in-engine.
• You're in the top 1% of AI users in game art, hands-on with tools like Scenario, ComfyUI and LoRA training.
• You've built and run your own generative art pipeline and shipped game art through it.
• You're a hands-on generalist artist.
• You've written a style bible others followed.
• You think about art commercially.
• You're based in or able to relocate to NYC for a hybrid schedule (relocation covered).
• You're authorized to work in the US.

Nice to have

• UI/UX expertise.
• You have shipped a game in a relevant genre, such as sandbox, sim, tycoon or builder.
• You are a passionate player of relevant genre games.
• You have worked on educational games, simulations or products.
• You have bridged game art and marketing: key art, trailers and social.
• You have worked across platforms: PC, mobile and web.
• You can make art that runs well inside a game engine: shaders, visual effects and performance, in 2D and 3D.

What this is not

• A typical game studio job. We are a very lean team operating like an indie studio or a startup. In year one you make the assets yourself rather than briefing vendors, and the rest of the team builds on your system. Owning additional initiatives within Founders School and beyond is an option later.
• A gallery. This is commercial art with a goal, shipped on a schedule.
• A cushy job. You are joining at zero. The expectations are extreme. The upside is becoming the named creator of the look of the defining entrepreneurship simulation game of this generation, and leading the art team you build.

Compensation

$250K base, cash compensation, no equity. We're willing to pay well above market because we want an art director who treats this like the most important thing they will ever build, not a side project, not a stepping stone. And as you grow the team and hit the early milestones, there's room for this salary to increase aggressively. We also cover relocation. The role is hybrid in NYC.