Description
About the job
The Puzzle Studio at Wooga is looking for a Principal Art Manager to lead our team of more than 30 artists working across seven casual games. Our goal is to create gorgeous puzzle games for smartphones and tablets, and we are looking for an experienced Studio Art Manager to help drive the visual quality of our games to the next level.
In this role, the manager will be responsible for overall staffing, team management and supporting leads in pushing highest possible quality of art, visual design and animation for Wooga’s puzzle portfolio.
What you will be doing
- Lead a diverse group of artists, visual designers, animators and technical artists across multiple products in all stages of development (e.g. concept, production, live operation).
- Partner with team leads to staff art teams with best possible talent at each stage of development.
- Drive group-wide understanding of visual quality required to compete at the forefront of the casual mobile games market. Set the bar for excellence in puzzle game art.
- Oversee performance and development of art staff, and support managers in solving key people challenges. As a manager of managers, foster growth of effective art leaders and independent teams.
- Recruit exceptional talent at all levels of seniority and skill areas to support Wooga’s dynamic portfolio of casual puzzle games.
- Focus on studio-wide art learning and improving expertise in genre-specific art concerns, such as clarity of puzzle gameplay, visual polish, animation and player feedback, etc.
- Identify and validate external partners (e.g. freelancers, outsourcing) suitable to scale art output or solve time- or cost-critical art and content challenges.
- Drive best practices and smart sharing in art pipeline tools, technology and processes.
- Lead studio review and feedback process for art, animation and visual design.
- Partner with Marketing art team to ensure game visual design and brand is expressed at a highest possible level of quality in advertising creative and other consumer-facing material (e.g. App Store assets, icon design, etc.).
- Work with executive leadership to create broadly stimulating, challenging and creative environment for artists at all levels of seniority.
What you bring
- 10+ years’ experience managing artists of multiple skill areas and experience (e.g. concept art, in-game assets, UI, animation, technical art).
- Experience building art teams from scratch and scaling through production.
- Expertise and passion for creating mobile games that appeal to tens of millions of players.
- Strong people manager. Demonstrated experience managing teams to high level of performance.
- Has a trusted and high-quality professional network of artists, freelancers and outsourcing partners.
- Solid understanding of competitive bar and quality factors required for casual mobile game visual design.
- Strong interest or experience in mass-market puzzle games.
Wooga is an equal opportunities employer. We invite international candidates to apply, as well as monsters and unicorns. It is optional to include your photo, date of birth, and place of birth in your application.
