Associate Art Director

Who We Are

Founded in 2023, Small Axe Studios is 2K’s newest stand-alone studio, built to push the boundaries of game development and bring 2K’s next groundbreaking sports franchise to life. Headquartered in Burnaby, we are assembling a world-class team of visionaries, builders, and passionate gamers who thrive on creative collaboration, technical excellence, and bold ideas. At Small Axe Studios, we believe big things start with sharp focus—and we’re crafting an exceptional, player-first experience from the ground up. If you’re ready to tackle unique challenges, leave your mark on a brand-new IP, and help shape the future of interactive sports entertainment, we want you on our team!

What We Need

We’re looking for an experienced Associate Art Director to help translate the Art Director’s vision into cohesive, high-quality work across our internal teams and external partners. You bring strong visual judgment, practical production experience, and a collaborative leadership style. Working closely with Art Direction, Technical Art, Production, and discipline leads, you’ll establish clear expectations, guide execution, and help teams balance visual ambition with scope, capacity, and performance requirements.

What You’ll Do

• Translate the Art Director’s vision into clear execution packages for internal and external partners. Work in facilitating practical visual targets, reference packages and acceptance criteria so leads and external partners understand what success looks like.
• Represent the art and tech art team and close communication gaps with external partners. Keep leadership informed of staffing and delivery risks, bringing recommendations and ensuring decisions reach the people doing the work.
• Maintain cohesion cross-disciplines internally and with external teams. Work across experience pods to ensure environment, character, lighting, and tech art work together into a consistent user experience. Reviewing dependencies with product owners and tracking down priorities that align with art and tech art goals.
• Partner with Production and art leads on scope, priorities and capacity. Working with Art leads and production to ensure that plans are crafted logically and build roadmaps across project timelines with predictable expectations.
• Collaborate with Art Director and Technical Art director to solve visual challenges to ensure the appropriate pipeline and results are carried across all other disciplines
• Own and champion the visual direction of the game when in production. Be the extension of Art Direction for the team, either internal or external partners to offload the challenges of building multiple assets (biome/stadium work/etc.)
• Liaison point of contact with external parties. Working closely with the content leads and any external vendor to ensure feedback is consistent and the quality output matches what is established internally.
• Collaborate with Tech Art Director to work out production plan, team growth and overall culture across the team

What Will Make You A Great Fit

• Experience leading multidisciplinary game art teams, with a portfolio demonstrating strong visual judgment and cohesive execution across environments, characters, and lighting.
• The ability to translate creative direction into actionable visual targets, reference packages, and clear acceptance criteria.
• Experience guiding external partners through production, delivering consistent feedback and maintaining quality across multiple workstreams.
• Strong production judgment, with the ability to assess scope, dependencies, and team capacity, and build realistic plans with Production and art leads.
• A practical understanding of real-time art pipelines and performance constraints, and experience partnering with Technical Art and Engineering to resolve visual challenges.
• Clear, proactive communication that connects leadership, discipline leads, and artists, surfaces risks early, and turns decisions into action.
• A supportive leadership style, with experience mentoring artists, developing teams, and building a collaborative culture.

The pay range for this position in British Columbia at the start of employment is expected to be between CAD $123,500 and CAD $182,780 per Year. However, base pay offered is based on market location, and may vary further depending on individualized factors for job candidates, such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and other objective business considerations. Subject to those same considerations, the total compensation package for employees in regular roles may also include other elements, including a bonus and/or equity awards, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, provided that temporary or intern roles will not be eligible for many of these payments or benefits. Details of participation in compensation and benefit plans (if applicable) will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.

As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to ensuring that qualified individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform their essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us if you need reasonable accommodation.

Please note that 2K Games and its studios never uses instant messaging apps or personal email accounts to contact prospective employees or conduct interviews and when emailing, only use 2K.com accounts.

#LI-Hybrid

- Experience leading multidisciplinary game art teams, with a portfolio demonstrating strong visual judgment and cohesive execution across environments, characters, and lighting. - Ability to translate creative direction into actionable visual targets, reference packages, and clear acceptance criteria. - Experience guiding external partners through production, delivering consistent feedback and maintaining quality across multiple workstreams. - Strong production judgment, with the ability to assess scope, dependencies, and team capacity, and build realistic plans with Production and art leads. - Practical understanding of real-time art pipelines and performance constraints, and experience partnering with Technical Art and Engineering to resolve visual challenges. - Clear, proactive communication that connects leadership, discipline leads, and artists, surfaces risks early, and turns decisions into action. - A supportive leadership style, with experience mentoring artists, developing teams, and building a collaborative culture.