Lead Visual Designer

Yahoo serves as a trusted guide for hundreds of millions of people globally, helping them achieve their goals online through our portfolio of iconic products. For advertisers, Yahoo Advertising offers omnichannel solutions and powerful data to engage with our brands and deliver results.

Within Yahoo Games, our mission is to make games a natural extension of the daily Yahoo experience—easy to discover, fun to play, and rewarding to return to. We are reimagining Yahoo Games as a modern casual gaming destination with a strong point of view on quality, craft, and player experience.

A Lot About You

We are seeking a talented Lead Artist (Games) to establish, create, and evolve the visual identity for Yahoo Games first-party original games as well as provide feedback on third party games. In this role, you will own the visual direction across all 1P games—setting a cohesive look that aligns with the Yahoo brand while helping define a distinctive visual language for Yahoo Games.

This is a hands-on individual contributor role with leadership influence. You will create high-quality game art assets, guide external artists and partners, and collaborate closely with Game Design, Product Management, Product Design, Engineering, and Production to bring games to life. You will also partner with Marketing, Yahoo Design Studio, and Growth teams to support promotional art and campaigns that help players discover and engage with our games.

If you are a strong visual storyteller, a casual games enthusiast, and a taste-maker who cares deeply about craft and player experience, this role is for you.

Your Day at Yahoo

• Own and define the visual direction for Yahoo Games first-party titles, establishing a distinctive visual identity that aligns with the Yahoo brand.

• Create high-quality game art assets, including UI elements, environments, characters, icons, and animations.

• Explore and experiment with AI-assisted tools to support rapid concepting, visual exploration, and early-stage asset creation.

• Leverage AI to accelerate prototyping and generate visual variations, helping the team quickly test different stylistic directions.

• Evaluate emerging AI tools that can improve creative workflows and asset production efficiency across the game development pipeline.

• Partner closely with Game Design, Product Management, and Product Design to shape the game experience from concept through launch.

• Work closely with the Game Producer and Engineering team to ensure art assets integrate smoothly into builds and production pipelines.

• Manage and guide contract artists and external partners, providing clear direction and maintaining a high bar for visual quality.

• Ensure art assets are optimized for performance across desktop and mobile web platforms.

• Support promotional and marketing art in collaboration with Marketing, Growth, and Yahoo Design Studio.

• Contribute to playtests and reviews, providing feedback on visual clarity, usability, and overall player experience.

• Provide visual feedback on third-party games and help maintain a consistent quality bar across the Yahoo Games platform.

You Must Have

• 5+ years of professional experience as a game artist, visual designer, or similar role in the games industry.

• Extensive experience working on casual games, ideally for desktop and mobile web platforms.

• Strong portfolio demonstrating visual direction, game art, UI design, and production-ready assets.

• Deep proficiency with Figma, Adobe Illustrator, and Photoshop.

• Experience creating both static and animated assets.

• Strong understanding of UI design principles and usability best practices.

• Familiarity with asset optimization, performance considerations, and production pipelines.

• Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams including product, engineering, and design.

• Experience working with external studios or contract artists.

• Deep interest in casual games and a strong point of view on what makes game art feel polished, approachable, and fun.

• Excellent communication, collaboration, and feedback skills.

Nice to Have

• Experience supporting live-ops games or content updates.

• Familiarity with motion tools (e.g., After Effects, Spine, Lottie, Rive).

• Experience creating promotional or marketing art for games.

• Background contributing to or defining visual systems or style guides.

The material job duties and responsibilities of this role include those listed above as well as adhering to Yahoo policies; exercising sound judgment; working effectively, safely and inclusively with others; exhibiting trustworthiness and meeting expectations; and safeguarding business operations and brand integrity.

At Yahoo, we offer flexible hybrid work options that our employees love! While most roles don’t require regular office attendance, you may occasionally be asked to attend in-person events or team sessions. You’ll always get notice to make arrangements. Your recruiter will let you know if a specific job requires regular attendance at a Yahoo office or facility. If you have any questions about how this applies to the role, just ask the recruiter!

Yahoo is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, and will not be discriminated against based on age, race, gender, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or any other protected category. Yahoo will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law. Yahoo is dedicated to providing an accessible environment for all candidates during the application process and for employees during their employment. If you need accessibility assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability, please submit a request via the Accommodation Request Form (www.yahooinc.com/careers/contact-us.html) or call +1.866.772.3182. Requests and calls received for non-disability related issues, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response.

We believe that a diverse and inclusive workplace strengthens Yahoo and deepens our relationships. When you support everyone to be their best selves, they spark discovery, innovation and creativity. Among other efforts, our 11 employee resource groups (ERGs) enhance a culture of belonging with programs, events and fellowship that help educate, support and create a workplace where all feel welcome.

The compensation for this position ranges from $128,250.00 - $266,875.00/yr and will vary depending on factors such as your location, skills and experience.The compensation package may also include incentive compensation opportunities in the form of discretionary annual bonus or commissions. Our comprehensive benefits include healthcare, a great 401k, backup childcare, education stipends and much (much) more.

Currently work for Yahoo? Please apply on our internal career site.