Art Director

Art Director - Hands-On, Top-Down Sci-Fi Strategy (Remote UK)

Location: Remote UK

Salary: £70k+

Start: Immediate - flexible for outstanding hires

Type: Full-time, senior lead (18 month project)

Overview: An early-stage studio building a top-down strategy/RTS-adjacent game with two complementary layers: a hard-surface, industrial UI/management layer (base systems, crafting, inventory/crew management) and large-scale planetary environments viewed from a satellite/top-down perspective. The visual tone is realistic, gritty sci-fi with a slight 1970s retro/dystopian sensibility. You’ll join a small growing studio and be the first hire for the Art Team as a hands-on Art Director.

Key responsibilities

• Define and own the visual language across environments, vehicles, props, and UI, ensuring strong top-down readability at medium/far camera distances.
• Lead, hire and mentor a small internal art team; have full input on all art hires.
• Be hands on, produce concept and production assets alongside your team, ensuring a consistently high quality.
• Create practical pipelines and workflows for modular asset assembly, procedural or generated content, and rapid iteration.
• Collaborate with design and engineering to translate gameplay systems into clear visual systems and prioritize deliverables for prototypes and production.

Must-have

• Senior lead with proven experience shipping or leading early stage projects from prototyping through to production.
• Portfolio demonstrating hard-surface sci-fi environments, props, and assets optimized for medium/far/top-down views (not focused on first-person interiors or character portraits).
• Hands-on skills in modelling/texturing/asset assembly; able to deliver production-ready art quickly.
• Strong leadership, hiring, communication and prioritisation skills for fast-moving small teams.

Nice-to-have

RTS/strategy or similar game experience.

Unity engine familiarity and common DCC toolchain experience.

We plan to deliver the main project in about 18 months and need someone who can commit for that period. You'll be joining a small early‑stage team so it’s hands‑on, fast paced and you’ll have real creative influence including hiring input. The role is remote‑first with occasional in‑person meetups, we prefer UK/Europe for timezone alignment but will consider exceptional candidates elsewhere. We’re looking for people who love indie/early‑stage development and want to ship quickly.