Animation Engineer

Summary

Join Escape Velocity as an Animation Systems Engineer to build and maintain character animation systems in a live game environment. Collaborate with Tech Art and Animation teams to create scalable, expressive, and performant systems. Develop modular animation layering, diagnose animation issues, and optimize secondary motion systems. Contribute to animation event timelines and improve in-editor workflows. Support animation systems in networked multiplayer environments and provide technical guidance. Escape Velocity offers a fully remote work environment and various benefits.

Requirements

• Expert-level C++ experience, with a strong understanding of real-time, performance-sensitive systems
• Proven experience building or maintaining real-time animation systems in Unreal or similar AAA engines
• Deep knowledge of skeletal animation, runtime blending, animation layering, and state machines
• Strong math foundation — including linear algebra, transform hierarchies, IK, and motion/physics integration
• Skilled at bridging animation, design, and engineering disciplines, helping teams converge on scalable, high-fidelity animation solutions

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain native animation instances for characters, weapons, and runtime systems — supporting both animation logic and visual behavior
• Develop systems for modular animation layering — enabling additive features like weapons, capes, and secondary attachments
• Collaborate with Tech Animation to refine and enforce data definitions, collision handling, and modular character build logic
• Diagnose and correct animation flow, sync behavior, and data-driven inconsistencies across runtime character systems
• Drive and optimize secondary motion systems, including cloth, physics-driven animation, and motion-based dynamics
• Contribute to animation event timelines, traversal logic, combat responsiveness, and cross-state blending in collaboration with design and animation
• Streamline preview systems and in-editor workflows to improve iteration speed and debuggability
• Improve animation system scalability across multiple platforms, balancing fidelity and performance for a wide range of hardware targets
• Support animation systems that operate reliably in networked multiplayer environments, with a focus on timing accuracy, prediction, and sync stability
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to support scalable animation systems and cross-team alignment

Preferred Qualifications

• Exposure to animation tools or pipelines designed for use by animators and other non-engineers is beneficial
• Familiarity with modular character systems, including swappable parts, layered collisions, and scalable asset structures, is highly valued
• Exposure to the technical considerations of multiplayer animation systems — such as network timing and replication — is helpful but not required

Benefits

• A generous PTO allowance
• Summer and Winter holidays studio closure (separate to PTO allowance)
• Private Medical & Dental Healthcare
• Private Mental Health scheme
• A generous annual Health & Wellbeing allowance
• Discretionary Studio Bonus
• Top range tech for your home set up
• Other benefits based on your region