Senior Animation Engineer

Summary

Join That's No Moon, an independent game studio, as a Senior Animation Engineer to create groundbreaking innovations for a AAA title. You will focus on Narrative Realization, collaborating with animators, writers, engineers, and designers to deliver exceptional experiences. Ground-breaking animations are crucial, and you'll build cutting-edge technology to create a moving narrative and foster player emotional connections. This role involves architecting, implementing, and maintaining animation systems, ensuring high-quality character assets and AI performances. You will collaborate with various teams, own features and systems, and write high-quality C/C++ code. The ideal candidate possesses extensive Unreal Engine experience, a strong understanding of 3Cs, and proven skills in shepherding animation from DCC to final pixels. The studio offers competitive compensation and benefits.

Requirements

• Experience working in Unreal Engine
• Strong understanding of 3Cs to expertly craft systems that attain the design goals of the game, maximize player comfort, and match player intuition
• Strong understanding of Cinematic & Narrative Presentation tools & workflows, in particular how tools and systems can be applied in differing contexts
• Proven skill at shepherding animation from DCC to final pixels, retaining artistic quality and narrative and emotional intent
• Solid knowledge of C++
• Strong math skills
• An appreciation of the role of narrative in an interactive experience
• An understanding of the principles of impactful and comprehensible narrative presentation to players

Responsibilities

• Architect, implement, and maintain the selection, integration, and manipulation of AAA quality gameplay and AI animations that reflect the narrative design goals, integrate narrative seamlessly into gameplay, and enhance the emotional impact of that narrative
• Ensure that narrative realization animation solutions leverage high quality character assets to their fullest potential
• Ensure that AI systems can deliver high quality animation performances that express narrative needs
• Break down features, building plans and assessing dependencies
• Work with the production team, narrative realization leadership and engineering leadership to schedule those plans
• Collaborate with animators, writers, designers, and engineers to provide holistic solutions
• Own features and systems, driving them to meet the needs of those holistic solutions
• Write production quality C/C++ for systems, features, tools, and workflows
• Analyze different approaches to solving problems and the tradeoffs between them
• Write and maintain documentation related to features, tools, and workflows

Preferred Qualifications

• Shipped at least one AAA game as a Narrative Realization specialist
• Comprehensive understanding of Unreal Engine Blueprints, state machines, blend spaces, Montages, Anim Graphs, and Event Graphs

Benefits

• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• 401(k) match
• Flexible PTO
• Supplemental life and disability