Senior Technical Animator (Unreal Engine)

Location: Remote within the United States

Salary: $125,000–$149,000 annually in the San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, and Washington, DC metropolitan areas; $100,000–$130,000 annually in Austin, Denver, Nashville, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and Miami metropolitan areas; $92,000–$118,000 annually in all other U.S. locations.

Company

hirify.global is a mid-sized game studio and startup known for the Poppy Playtime franchise, creating atmospheric and emotionally impactful experiences primarily with Unreal Engine.

What you will do

• Develop and maintain animation systems, character rigs, automated lip sync, and runtime animation solutions in Unreal Engine.
• Build tools and pipelines that improve animation workflow efficiency.
• Collaborate with animators, designers, gameplay engineers, and technical artists to integrate and optimize animation assets.
• Optimize animation performance, memory usage, and runtime stability.
• Troubleshoot rigging and animation issues across the production pipeline.
• Support motion capture integration, retargeting, procedural animation, documentation, and mentoring for junior technical animators.

Requirements

• At least 3 years of technical animation and rigging experience in the video game industry.
• Strong Unreal Engine experience, including Control Rig and animation systems.
• Proficiency with Maya or similar DCC tools, including rigging and scripting workflows.
• Experience with animation state machines, blend trees, runtime animation, skinning, and deformation systems.
• Familiarity with Python, MEL, C++, or Blueprint for tool and pipeline development.
• Strong problem-solving, debugging, communication, and cross-discipline collaboration skills.

Nice to have

• Experience with motion capture pipelines, retargeting, Unreal rigging tools, Control Rig procedural animation, physics-based animation, or IK systems.
• Experience optimizing animation for console or PC performance constraints.
• Shipped experience on at least one AAA or mid-sized studio game title.
• Experience developing animation tools or plugins.

Culture & Benefits

• Remote work for U.S.-based employees.
• Profit sharing and 401(k) matching.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, plus FSA/HSA options.
• Paid time off, sick time, holidays, and parental leave for eligible full-time employees.
• Collaboration through Jira and Confluence with a focus on disciplined game production.