Technical and Craft Leadership

• Review 3D work and provide clear, actionable feedback across modeling, topology, UVs, texturing, rigging, skinning, animation, Unity implementation, and mobile optimization. Maintain a strong quality bar while ensuring work remains appropriate to production and platform constraints.

Hands-On Technical and Production Support

• Remain close enough to production to investigate problems, prototype solutions, and contribute specialist knowledge or additional support as required. Retain sufficient hands-on proficiency to understand current workflows and provide credible technical and artistic direction.

Asset Optimisation

• Ensure assets are optimized for mobile platforms without compromising visual quality, user experience, or adherence to Brand and Company guidelines. Work with Technical Art and Engineering to understand performance constraints and establish appropriate budgets and standards.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Partnerships

Technical Art Partnership

• Partner closely with Technical Artists, providing requirements and priorities from the 3D discipline and collaborating on tools, automation, shaders, performance improvements, and engine-side solutions. The 3D Art Lead is accountable for the effectiveness of the overall 3D production workflow; Technical Artists provide specialist technical implementation and engineering-facing expertise.

Collaboration

• Work closely with designers, programmers, technical artists, producers, and QA to ensure 3D assets are implemented successfully, dependencies are understood, and risks are resolved early. Communicate art requirements clearly and negotiate technical trade-offs constructively.

Continuous Improvement & Risk Management

Pipeline Troubleshooting and Risk Identification

• Investigate recurring or high-impact issues affecting 3D production and implementation. Determine whether problems originate in asset creation, workflow, Unity configuration, tools, or engineering systems, and coordinate the appropriate people to resolve them. Identify risks early enough to be addressed during planning rather than late in production.

3D Track Development

• Support the growth of the 3D discipline within the Art Department by identifying skills gaps, training needs, workflow improvements, tooling opportunities, and future capability requirements.

Key Skills, Knowledge & Experience

3D Art & Production

• Extensive professional experience in 3D art for games, animation, interactive media, or a closely related field, including experience in leadership and/or people management roles.
• Expert knowledge of real-time 3D production workflows, including modeling, topology, UV mapping, texturing, materials, rigging, skinning, animation, asset export/import, and runtime optimization.
• Advanced proficiency in Maya across core 3D production disciplines, with the ability to inspect, troubleshoot, and modify assets, rigs, and scenes as required.
• Strong working knowledge of Substance Painter and relevant Adobe Creative Cloud applications.
• Portfolio or showreel demonstrating high-quality 3D artwork and relevant production experience.

Unity & Technical Knowledge

• Strong professional experience using Unity, including asset integration, prefab management, materials, animation implementation, import settings, and performance-conscious workflows.
• Strong understanding of mobile optimization principles, including geometry, textures, memory usage, materials, draw calls, batching, level of detail (LOD) management, and profiling concepts.
• Experience collaborating with Technical Artists and Engineers to resolve pipeline, tooling, and runtime challenges.
• Experience using version control systems, such as Git, within a collaborative development environment.

Desirable

• Knowledge of shaders, visual effects (VFX), lighting, and Unity rendering pipelines beyond routine 3D production requirements.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Proven experience leading, mentoring, or managing artists, including 1:1s, performance feedback, development planning, and day-to-day support.
• Strong communication, listening, problem-solving, and leadership skills, with the ability to work effectively across Art, Engineering, Production, Design, and QA.
• Confidence evaluating technical approaches, challenging assumptions, and negotiating practical technical and production trade-offs.
• Experience supporting recruitment, onboarding, and team capability development.

Pipeline & Process Improvement

• Proven experience improving 3D production pipelines or workflows within a shipped production environment.
• Ability to identify bottlenecks, investigate root causes, and implement improvements that increase efficiency, consistency, quality, or scalability.
• Experience establishing production standards, asset specifications, naming conventions, folder structures, validation requirements, and documentation.
• Strong systems-oriented approach to workflow, pipeline, and process improvement.

Mobile Games & Industry Experience

• Professional experience within the games industry, ideally in mobile game development.
• Strong understanding of mobile game development, real-time asset creation, and asset optimization.
• Experience working within Agile development environments and collaborating with Production on planning, capacity management, dependencies, and delivery.
• Proficiency in industry-standard creative software and tools relevant to 3D art production.

Desirable

• Degree in Fine Arts, Game Design, Computer Graphics, Animation, or a related discipline.
• Experience working with licensed intellectual property (IP), strict brand guidelines, and external stakeholders.
• Experience developing games or applications for children, families, or younger audiences.
• Experience using project management and collaboration tools such as Jira, Slack, Float, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Office.
• Experience with creative software including ZBrush, Blender, and Adobe Premiere.

Education

Desirable

• A degree in Fine Arts, Game Design, Computer Graphics, Animation, or a related field is preferred but not mandatory.