Lead Level Artist - AAA Project

Job Description

The Lead Level Artist is responsible for the quality, consistency, and artistic execution of the environments produced by the World team. 

Reporting to the World Lead, he or she organizes, supports, and guides the Level Art team to transform the artistic, technical, and gameplay vision into environments that are clear, believable, and technically sound. 

They work in close partnership with the Lead Level Designer to ensure perfect alignment between design intent, gameplay experience, and visual execution. 

They collaborate daily with the Technical Director to integrate technical constraints, production tools, and methods that ensure efficient and sustainable production. 

Beyond their own team, they actively contribute to World-related decisions and advocate for artistic considerations with other disciplines on the project. 

Responsibilities 

Level Art Team management 

•    Organize the work of the Level Art team and set production priorities.  

•    Support, mentor, and develop the artists’ skills.  

•    Provide regular, clear, and constructive feedback.  

•    Foster a team culture based on autonomy, accountability, and knowledge sharing.  

•    Identify production risks and quickly propose appropriate solutions.  

•    Ensure that deadlines, expected quality standards, and production methods are met. 

Collaboration within the World Team 

•    Translate the Art Direction and World Director’s vision into concrete artistic objectives for the World team.  

•    Build a day-to-day working relationship with the World Lead to align quality, priorities, and production capacity.  

•    Work closely with the Lead Level Designer to build environments where art direction, clarity, composition, and gameplay experience reinforce one another.  

•    Collaborate with the Technical Director to anticipate technical constraints, optimize workflows, and ensure seamless integration of content within controlled performance parameters.  

•    Work with other Leads to define quality standards, production guidelines, and best practices for the World team.  

•    Ensure visual consistency at all scales across the environments under your responsibility. 

Collaboration with the rest of the project 

•    Communicate Level Art considerations to the Art Direction, Technical Direction, Game Direction, and Production teams.  

•    Collaborate with the Gameplay, Programming, Tech Art, QA, and other teams to ensure consistent integration of content.  

•    Help resolve trade-offs between artistic vision, technical constraints, quality, and scheduling.  

•    Foster smooth communication among the various teams involved in the production of the game world. 

Artistic Excellence 

•    Define the artistic standards for the environments produced by your team in accordance with the Art Direction’s requirements. 

•    Ensure the quality of compositions, materials, visual transitions, and spatial coherence.  

•    Develop a clear understanding of spaces, paying particular attention to rhythm, volume, visual cues, and the continuity of the experience.  

•    Identify opportunities for artistic improvement throughout the production process.  

•    Stay abreast of industry methods, tools, and practices to continuously improve the team’s workflows. 

Qualifications

Leadership 

•    Proven experience managing an artistic team in AAA production.  

•    Ability to unite a team around common goals.  

•    Ability to make decisions, mediate, and prioritize effectively.  

•    Excellent communication and collaboration skills. 

Artistic Expertise 

•    Extensive experience creating environments for video games.  

•    Excellent understanding of composition, materials, color, volume, and environmental storytelling.  

•    A keen eye for the clarity of spaces, visual transitions, the continuity of environments, and how they are perceived at different scales.  

•    Ability to maintain a high level of quality in a complex production environment. 

Collaboration 

•    Ability to work daily with Design, Technical, and Production teams.  

•    Understanding of gameplay, performance, and pipeline constraints.  

•    Ability to translate a creative vision into concrete production goals.  

•    Strong knowledge of the disciplines involved in world-building (architecture, geography, geology, urban planning, landscape architecture, or equivalent fields). 

Personal Qualities 

The candidate stands out for: 

•    Strong creativity applied to production goals.  

•    A high degree of rigor in organizing and supervising his team.  

•    The ability to adapt, allowing him to adjust methods when the situation requires it. 

•    Clear, constructive, and problem-solving-oriented communication. 

•    Fluency in English 

Additional Information

Founded in 1996, Ubisoft Annecy has developed many sagas, especially on Splinter Cell, Assassin’s Creed®, while focusing on multiplayer online and social aspects, and also on concrete game mandates such as Tom Clancy’s: The Division 2® and Ghost Recon Wildlands. We are now proud to have developed our own IP, Steep and more recently Riders Republic!

On top of our AAA production, we are working on innovation with a technological expertise hub around the Snowdrop engine pipeline, and Technology Group in collaboration with Ubisoft Montreal.

Located in one of the most dynamic regions of France, our Ubisoft studio is settled between lake and mountains, in the middle of Annecy, also known as the Venice of the Alps, 30 minutes away from Geneva International Airport. Having a studio with perpetual growth, we are focusing on our team members' commitment and team work. Our ambition relies on innovation and excellence with an ultimate purpose: our players' satisfaction !