Art

Associate Art Manager - Permanent

About Us

London Studio are building a team from the ground up for an upcoming PlayStation 5 online game. Quality is something that we are immensely proud to be aiming for, and we are looking at putting the right team together to help take us forward. New starters will be joining at the perfect time to get involved in shaping our plans for a project we are exceptionally passionate about.

We are also part of a wider network of PlayStation Studios and there are lots of opportunities for collaboration and wider support from our sister studios like Insomniac, Guerrilla, Naughty Dog and Media Molecule to name a few.

About the Role

We are looking for an Associate Art Manager, to be at the beating heart of our Art team. This role is about orchestrating our people, partners, and processes in order to amplify our art’s value and impact at scale. It establishes clarity and organisation for the team and values empowering artists, prioritising empathy, and inclusion.

The ideal candidate will understand art, design, and technical fundamentals, so they can identify risks and dependencies, providing or seeking solutions to resolve creative and management issues so that it aligns with overall project goals. These unique abilities allow you to empower others, and ensuring Artists are supported in their growth opportunities. They will also have to be effective through all stages and aspects of development, including managing third parties which this role will have a key accountability for.

This is a key management role reporting to our Art Manager. It ensures our projects receive hands on direction, and our individual team members or business partner’s methods and measures are crafting consistent, high-quality projects and live service operations.

Scope of Work

External Development (Art & Animation)

• You are responsible for managing and steering the external development of our art and animation
• Own, maintain and monitor the outsourcing production schedule. Ensuring our scope, schedule and approach is scalable and flexible to meet our global development demands. Supervising and communicating budget, capacity, key indicators, and project progress in external development.
• Take responsibility for Art's external finance functions and budgets to ensure a healthy, accurate external development.
• Support and grow our vendor relationships, ensuring stable long term mutually beneficial partnerships. Work closely with the Art Manager to anticipate skills and resource needs, where you will then plan and book against our needs to ensure that the best resources are always available to London Studio.
• Establish and own our processes for external development within the art dept. Responsible for improving or even establishing our internal systems for partner onboarding, Legal, InfoSec, Technology and Networking.
• Ensure an efficient engagement for our internal teams and partners being responsible for defining processes, workflows, documentation, and confirming expectations are accurate, communicated and understood by our partners.
• Attend meetings, calls and events to confidently discuss project needs, challenges, or progress from initial contact through to ongoing development.
• Support internal initiatives to educate on external development the best practises, benefits. Championing our partners, and advocacy for expansion of our external partnerships on projects.

Team Management

• Working closely with multiple fields to ensure features are resourced, partnering across our teams to ensure our content is delivered on time to budget, and quality.
• Support, lead and maintain our departments infrastructure (IT, Networking, Software Licensing, DAM and Source Control systems for example)
• Partner with the Art Manager to contribute to setting wider department strategy, processes, best practises, and goals crafted to improve our teams year over year
• When required assist or deputise for the Art Manager in all aspects of production, outsource management, team management, recruitment, and organisational needs of the Art Department.

Essential Knowledge & Skills

• The candidate must have experience in leadership and / or management and delivery of high-performance, high-quality art for AAA titles.
• Excellent communication skills (both verbal and written), with an ability to engage with team, partners, and wider Sony Interactive Entertainment business and understand when pushback is required.
• Strong organisational skills
• Has foresight and confidence to deliver within a constantly evolving studio or outsourcing, timelines, budgets, and expectations.
• Someone who is pro-active and conducive to the mentoring and objective critiquing of a growing Art Department.
• Willingness to travel.

Impact and Complexity

This is a sophisticated role as it’s a hands-on, fast paced role as part of an Art Leadership team responsible for quality, consistency and delivery of art and animation from internal and external teams on an ambitious first party PlayStation project. All whilst building a culture of high trust, and dedication to excellence.

Culture Ambassador

We encourage you to bring your best-unaltered self to work! We know that what makes for a phenomenal team culture is our team showing up and being themselves, which means they own a part of the team spirit. What makes us great is that we accept our people and their differences. We hope you have a willingness to continue to build outstanding working environments for everyone and not just yourself.

DE&I Advocate

You are passionate about Diversity and Inclusion, and to you, they aren’t just buzzwords. You will understand that these words speak to people’s lived experiences that may differ from your own. You will embrace education around the subject and understand that your actions will showcase your commitment to DE&I, our culture and core values that promote inclusion and equality for all.

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Our roles can be flexible in terms of work location in the UK. We will consider the individual’s preference for hybrid, remote or onsite working. Unfortunately we are not in a position to accommodate remote working outside of the UK.

However, if you wish to relocate to the UK and require sponsorship, we can support you with the visa process.

We have so many benefits, and we felt that if we listed them all out here it might look like we are bragging! What we can say is that we have you covered, from health and wellbeing, to finance and personal development, there is something there for everyone! If you would like to know more head to our benefits and perks page!

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We are absolutely committed to promoting and increasing diversity across the studio, welcoming applications from all groups who are underrepresented in the games industry and if you don't feel you meet 100% of the criteria, we offer training to upskill our staff.