Lead Animator

Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom; full in-studio or hybrid with a minimum of 3 days per week in the studio. Relocation support is available.

Company

hirify.global is an independent video game developer and publisher creating immersive games, including creative management simulation titles.

What you will do

• Own animation progress, delivery, quality, vision, priorities, dependencies, and delivery plans for an assigned project.
• Lead and organise a large animation team, delegating ownership, balancing workload, setting expectations, and providing feedback.
• Partner with Production, Project Direction, discipline leadership, and senior management on scope, schedules, capacity, milestones, risks, and mitigations.
• Guide character and creature animation practice, engine implementation, and creative standards across internal and external contributors.
• Collaborate with Technical Animation, Animation Code, and Rigging to improve tools, pipelines, workflows, and technical decisions.
• Manage animation outsourcing, support recruitment and onboarding, and facilitate documentation and best practices.

Requirements

• Significant games-industry animation experience, including leading large teams on complex projects.
• Strong character and/or creature animation craft, visual judgement, implementation knowledge, and understanding of animation pipelines.
• Experience planning team delivery, tracking progress, balancing capacity, and recovering off-track work.
• Effective people leadership, including delegation, objective setting, coaching, development, and performance management.
• Experience partnering with Production and coordinating with Project Direction, discipline leaders, and external partners.
• Sound judgement and decision-making, including maintaining progress through uncertainty and aligning stakeholders.
• Expert knowledge of anatomy, movement, and performance, with the ability to give clear, actionable direction.
• Strong knowledge of animation engine tools and systems, including blend trees, state machines, and retargeting systems.
• Experience collaborating with Animation or Gameplay Code, Technical Animation, and Rigging on pipeline, process, and tool improvements.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills, including constructive challenge, difficult feedback, and clear escalation.

Nice to have

• Experience on AAA or large multidisciplinary productions and with Unreal or Unity.
• Experience shaping animation strategy, team structures, hiring plans, and long-term capability.
• Knowledge of cinematics, camera theory, motion capture, and motion-capture clean-up.
• Experience creating Python or MEL tools and maintaining internal documentation.
• Experience leading distributed teams or mixed internal and external development groups.

Culture & Benefits

• Creative, collaborative, and inclusive environment focused on developing and publishing sophisticated games.
• Wellbeing initiatives supporting mental and physical health, with an emphasis on work-life balance.
• Competitive salary and benefits package with an annual success-based bonus, share option schemes, life assurance, and private family healthcare.
• Flexitime working hours, enhanced maternity and paternity leave, subsidised in-house catering, and social activities.
• Relocation support, Cycle to Work scheme, and free bike servicing.
• Reasonable adjustments are available during the recruitment process.