Senior Technical Animator (Unity)

TL;DR

Senior Technical Animator (Unity): Developing and optimizing character animation pipelines for mobile games with an accent on rigging, skinning, and tool creation. Focus on building custom tools, integrating animations into the engine, and ensuring performance-optimized rigs for AAA-quality characters.

Location: Leamington Spa, Warwickshire (Hybrid)

Company

Mobile game studio with over a decade of experience developing award-winning titles like Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade and Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realm War, now working on a new ambitious project.

What you will do

• Lead development of animation features, processes, and pipelines to streamline workflows for animators.
• Specify and write custom tools in Python, MEL, Qt, and C# for Unity Editor scripting.
• Establish studio-wide best practices for skinning, rigging, and animation implementation in the game engine.
• Build and manage character pipelines, including facial rigs, cloth, and muscle dynamics optimized for mobile performance.
• Collaborate across disciplines to bridge artistic vision and technical execution from rig to in-game integration.
• Handle Motion Capture processes and source control with Perforce.

Requirements

• Proven experience building sophisticated character pipelines from scratch in Maya and MotionBuilder.
• Deep understanding of animation principles, rigging, skinning, anatomy, and character topology.
• Proficiency in Python, MEL, Qt for tools, and C# Unity scripting.
• Experience with Motion Capture and source control like Perforce.
• Ability to integrate advanced techniques like facial rigging and secondary dynamics in mobile pipelines.
• Strong problem-solving, communication, and collaboration skills.

Culture & Benefits

• Progressive, inclusive, and collaborative environment with flexi-time working hours.
• Competitive salary with annual review, discretionary bonus, and company pension.
• 25 days annual leave + bank holidays, up to 3 long service days, private medical insurance (optical/dental).
• Death in service benefit, regular socials, staff training/development, quarterly wellness days with on-site massages.