Senior Animation Programmer
Animation Programming focuses on building and maintaining the technical systems that drive character animation within a game engine. This role develops scalable animation systems and features such as state machines, root motion, inverse kinematics, and motion matching to ensure animations are believable and responsive in both gameplay and cinematics. It supports and improves animation workflows and pipelines by creating tools and utilities that streamline content creation and integration. Core responsibilities include debugging and optimizing animation systems for performance, implementing efficient and maintainable code, and collaborating closely with animators, AI designers, gameplay programmers, and other technical teams to ensure animations meet design and gameplay requirements within complex game environments.
- Strong proficiency in C++ (and ideally in C# as well), with substantial experience in low-level programming, including performance optimisation and memory management
- Knowledge of procedural animation and IK systems within Unreal Engine
- Extensive experience with Unreal Engine, particularly with its animation systems such as Animation Blueprints, Sequencer, and Control Rig
- Experience with other animation systems or engines (e.g., Maya, MotionBuilder, Unity), and the ability to integrate these into existing pipelines
- Familiarity with graphics APIs (e.g., DirectX, Vulkan, OpenGL) and experience with GPU programming
- Experience with motion capture data integration, facial animation systems, and keyframe animation techniques and knowledge of rigging, skinning, skeletal animation
- Experience in performance optimisation techniques such as multi-threading, SIMD, and GPU programming
Software & Tools
C
Control Rig
Maya
MotionBuilder
DirectX
Vulkan
OpenGL
SIMD
GPU
Technical Areas
Core gameplay animation systems (locomotion/combat)
mocap/facial/keyframe integration
performance & memory optimisation
code reviews & feature delivery
backlog/prioritisation
Interpersonal Skills
Communication
Cross-disciplinary teamwork
Positive team attitude