Senior Animation Engineer

Accountabilities

• Develop, maintain, and optimize animation runtime systems in Unity, including state machines, blend trees, layers, masks, root motion, animation events, and compression.
• Design and integrate data-oriented animation solutions using ECS/DOTS, Entities, Jobs, Burst, and baking workflows.
• Research and implement advanced animation technologies, including GPU skinning, deformation, compute shaders, vertex shaders, and vertex animation techniques.
• Build Unity Editor tools, validators, asset processors, custom workflows, and production utilities that improve the efficiency of animation teams.
• Support character rigging, skeleton, skinning, and FBX workflows between DCC tools such as Maya or Blender and Unity.
• Profile and optimize animation systems across mobile hardware, with particular attention to performance constraints on Adreno and Mali GPUs.
• Collaborate closely with Animators, Technical Artists, Gameplay Engineers, Rendering Engineers, and other technical disciplines.
• Lead technical investigations and take promising R&D concepts from initial prototypes through to production-ready and maintainable features.
• Establish clear documentation, reusable workflows, technical standards, and systems that enable other team members to build confidently.
• Balance animation quality, runtime performance, system complexity, and usability when making architectural and technical decisions.
• Review and improve existing animation systems while remaining comfortable evaluating both creative animation workflows and engineering implementations.

Requirements

• Strong professional experience with C# and Unity engineering.
• Hands-on experience with ECS/DOTS, including Entities, Burst, Jobs, and baking, or deep equivalent experience with data-oriented engine architecture.
• Strong understanding of animation runtimes, including state machines, blend trees, layers, masks, root motion, animation events, and compression.
• Practical experience with GPU skinning and deformation using structured or constant buffers, compute shaders, vertex shaders, or comparable techniques.
• Shader development experience using HLSL and a node-based tool such as Shader Graph, Amplify, or similar.
• Solid understanding of character rigs, skeletons, skinning, and FBX pipelines using Maya, Blender, or comparable tools.
• Experience creating Unity Editor tooling, including asset postprocessors, validators, custom inspectors, editor windows, and production automation tools.
• Experience profiling and optimizing graphics and animation workloads on mobile platforms, particularly Adreno and Mali hardware.
• Familiarity with graphics APIs such as GLES and Vulkan and their platform-specific considerations.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to independently investigate complex technical challenges.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to work effectively with both artists and engineers.
• Fluent English.

Nice to have

• Experience with DOTS animation frameworks such as Rukhanka, Latios Kinemation, or similar technologies.
• Experience developing or extending a custom animation runtime.
• Knowledge of networked animation systems involving prediction and rollback.
• Experience with Netcode for Entities or comparable multiplayer technologies.
• Experience with procedural animation, including IK, secondary motion, or physics-driven animation layers.
• Experience developing facial animation systems using blendshapes, bones, textures, or hybrid techniques.
• Experience with crowd animation systems, including animation LOD, VAT, or update throttling.
• Previous experience developing animation systems for mobile or other performance-constrained platforms.
• Experience working on stylized game projects, particularly for mobile platforms.

Benefits

• Meaningful technical ownership over animation technology on a major Unity3D game project.
• Direct collaboration with experienced Animators, Technical Artists, Engineers, and discipline leads.
• The opportunity to work on challenging technical R&D and transform innovative concepts into production-ready systems.
• A highly collaborative international team and cross-disciplinary working environment.
• Fully remote work.
• Flexible contract options depending on location.
• Competitive compensation based on experience and contract structure.
• Annual team retreats.
• Potential for long-term collaboration as the project and team continue to grow.