Principal / Lead Character Artist - Studio Elevation (Remote within the UK)

As a Lead Character Artist, you will set the benchmark for character quality and help shape the artistic vision for character development across the project. This role combines creative leadership with hands-on technical expertise, supporting strong workflows and scalable pipelines while ensuring characters achieve high visual quality and perform well on target hardware.

You’ll collaborate closely with concept art, animation, design, narrative, tech, and production teams to keep character development aligned with the project’s creative and technical goals. You will help refine processes, encourage innovation, and play a key role in delivering a cohesive character art direction.

The rundown

• 12-month fixed term contract
• Full time (37.5 hours per week)
• Fully remote within the UK
• Salary is competitive and dependent on experience

Key responsibilities

• Set and uphold high standards for character art quality across the project.
• Help define and maintain the visual direction for characters in collaboration with art leadership.
• Lead and improve character pipelines, workflows, and best practices.
• Support and mentor character artists across different experience levels.
• Work cross-disciplinarily to ensure character art aligns with creative, narrative, and gameplay goals.
• Review character assets and provide constructive feedback to ensure consistency and quality.
• Collaborate with production to plan work, estimate effort, and meet milestones.
• Ensure characters meet technical, performance, and platform requirements.
• Support outsourcing efforts where needed, including feedback and quality checks.

The skills you’ll need

• At least 5 years’ experience working in an art role within the games industry.
• A portfolio (link or file) showcasing relevant character art work.
• Experience contributing to or leading character art direction and delivery.
• Skills in character modelling, texturing, and material creation.
• Clear communication skills and confidence collaborating across disciplines.
• Experience working with outsourcing partners or external contributors.
• Ability to support efficient, scalable workflows.
• Interest in mentoring, supporting others, and contributing to team development.

The nice to haves

• Experience working across multiple platforms or hardware targets.
• Familiarity with a range of character art styles or genres.
• Experience supporting hiring, onboarding, or knowledge-sharing initiatives.

About nDreams

We are nDreams – creators of some of the world’s most immersive VR games. You might know us from Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, Synapse, Phantom: Covert Ops, Fracked, FRENZIES, Wreckin Racoons, or our latest adventure, Reach. From humble beginnings as an independent studio, we’ve grown into a leading VR developer, combining ambitious projects and global scale with a personal, caring touch.

We believe the best workplaces and games are created by diverse, happy and safe teams. We’re committed to building a culture centred on respect, wellbeing and balance. It’s crucial we make our games and industry more accessible to underrepresented communities. We strive to live this through the people we hire, the experiences we create and the causes we support.

We want everyone to have the opportunity to bring their best, authentic self to work. Please let us know if you require reasonable adjustments during the interview process by emailing interviewing@ndreams.com or speaking to your nDreams recruiter. For more information about reasonable adjustments, check out this guidance from Scope.

We offer great perks, including flexible hours, duvet days, your birthday off, dedicated personal development time and support, as well as regular socials. Beyond this, there’s an excellent holiday offering, pension scheme, health insurance, life cover and much more.