Lead Animator (Unreal Engine)

Location: Remote role associated with Novato, California, United States

Salary: $123,200–$182,360 USD per year at the start of employment in California; additional compensation may include bonus and/or equity awards.

Company

hirify.global develops evocative, immersive BioShock games and collaborates across design, art, engineering, animation, and audio to create AAA experiences.

What you will do

• Manage, mentor, and support a team of gameplay animators through 1:1s, evaluations, goal-setting, and feedback.
• Establish the animation vision with the Animation Director and leadership while fostering an inclusive team culture.
• Develop animation pipelines, workflows, tools, onboarding, Unreal Engine 5 training, and motion capture plans.
• Create hand-key animations and edit motion capture data for first-person and third-person characters, including gameplay and AI animation.
• Partner with Production on milestone roadmaps, sprint planning, task delegation, issue resolution, and hiring.
• Share animation best practices and contribute to leadership decisions, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and development problem-solving.

Requirements

• Multiple shipped AAA titles as a Lead, Team Lead, or Senior Animator, ideally using Unreal Engine.
• Deep knowledge of gameplay and AI animation systems, animation graph and data integration, motion capture pipelines, rigging, and prototyping.
• Strong practical experience with hand-key facial animation, including tools such as FaceFX.
• High proficiency animating human bipeds, organic forms, quadrupeds, and mechanical objects.
• Exceptional understanding of traditional animation principles, human anatomy, caricature, form, gesture, and silhouette for real-time gameplay.
• For candidates located in Quebec: professional proficiency in French and English is required.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative work across design, art, engineering, animation, audio, and production.
• Culture focused on openness, learning through play, ownership, progress, and respectful collaboration.
• Full-time employment with medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance coverage.
• Paid holidays, vacation, sick days, parental and compassionate leave.
• 401(k), employee stock purchase program, wellbeing and family planning support, commuter benefits, and fitness expense reimbursement.