Senior Technical Animator

Please note:

We welcome applicants who prefer to work from home; however, we cannot offer visa sponsorship for this opportunity at this time.

Role
-R206

We are looking for a Senior Technical Animator who combines strong character animation skills with a thorough understanding of Unreal Engine's character animation systems.

Your time will be split between refining animation assets and implementing animation systems in Unreal Engine. Working alongside the Lead Combat Designer, you will help deliver responsive, fluid and impactful melee combat, drawing inspiration from Shadow of Mordor and God of War. The emphasis is on powerful character performance, seamless combat transitions and responsive player control.

This is a hands-on role requiring independence, sound judgement and the ability to take work from an initial brief through to a polished result in-game.

• Refine, edit and adapt existing animation assets, including motion capture, to meet the needs of gameplay and character performance.
• Implement and maintain character animation systems in Unreal Engine, including Animation Blueprints, state machines, blend spaces, and animation montages.
• Work with motion matching, motion warping, root motion, inverse kinematics (IK) and Control Rig to support responsive character movement and combat.
• Collaborate with the Lead Combat Designer on attacks, combos, dodges, parries, hit reactions and transitions between locomotion and combat.
• Balance animation quality with gameplay responsiveness, paying close attention to timing, weight, spacing, readability and player control.
• Use animation notifies, notify states and montage sections to coordinate animation with gameplay events.
• Diagnose and resolve animation issues, including blending, foot sliding, alignment, retargeting and interruptions.
• Profile and optimise animation systems for performance and maintainability.
• Manage your own workload, communicate progress and risks, and proactively propose solutions.
• Document systems and workflows so that other team members can use and maintain them.
• 7 years of professional experience at a senior level in technical animation
  , or equivalent experience demonstrating independent ownership of complex character animation work.
• Demonstrable experience working on melee combat games, with a strong understanding of combat timing, anticipation, impact, recovery and transitions.
• Strong character animation skills, including the ability to assess and improve motion capture and existing animation data.
• A thorough practical understanding of Unreal Engine character and animation systems, including:
  • Blueprints and Animation Blueprints.
  • State machines, blend spaces and layered animation blending.
  • Animation montages, sections, slots, notifies and notify states.
  • Motion matching and Pose Search.
  • Motion warping and root motion.
  • IK, Control Rig and animation retargeting.
  • The interaction between character movement, gameplay logic, and animation.
  • Animation debugging, profiling and optimisation.
• Proficiency in Blender or Maya, with Blender preferred.
• The ability to move animation assets reliably between content creation tools and Unreal Engine.
• The ability to work independently, identify problems, and deliver practical solutions with minimal supervision.
• Clear communication skills and confidence collaborating with design and other development disciplines in a distributed team.
• Character rigging and skinning experience.
• Experience developing or maintaining animation pipelines and tools.
• Experience with motion capture cleanup, retargeting, and adaptation across different character proportions.
• Experience with procedural animation and runtime animation adjustments.
• Familiarity with fluid,…