Senior or Lead Gameplay Animator (AAA FPS Experience)

About the Role
We are looking for a Senior or Lead Gameplay Animator with strong AAA FPS experience to help shape responsive, compelling character movement and moment-to-moment gameplay. With a focus on Character, Controls, and Camera (3C), you will combine animation craft with practical implementation skills to develop features from early prototypes through final in-game polish. Working closely with gameplay designers, programmers, and technical animators, you will help ensure that character animation, player input, and camera behavior work together to deliver a cohesive player experience.

What You’ll Do

• Own gameplay animation features from concept to completion, including reference gathering, prototyping, asset creation, engine integration, debugging, and polish.
• Create high-quality character movement and action animations, covering locomotion, directional changes, stance transitions, traversal, and combat interactions.
• Contribute to first-person animation and its relationship with full-body movement, weapon handling, and camera feedback.
• Partner with designers and programmers to refine movement responsiveness, action timing, transitions, and interruption behavior while preserving believable weight and physicality.
• Build and refine animation graphs, state machines, blend setups, and animation layers within the project’s engine and tools.
• Use keyframe animation and motion-capture workflows to deliver animation that meets gameplay and visual requirements.
• Evaluate your work in playable builds, identify the causes of animation issues, and collaborate across disciplines to resolve them.
• Work with technical animation and engineering teams to improve workflows and address runtime, asset, and production constraints.
• For Lead-level appointments, guide feature planning, establish animation quality benchmarks, provide actionable feedback, and mentor teammates while continuing to create and implement animation directly.

What You’ll Bring

• Proven experience creating and implementing gameplay animation for AAA first-person shooters, with clear ownership of features or animation systems.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating body mechanics, weight, timing, posing, and a clear understanding of responsive gameplay animation.
• Practical experience taking animation assets into a game engine and iterating on their behavior in playable builds.
• Working knowledge of animation graphs, state machines, blending, additive animation, and gameplay-driven transitions.
• An understanding of how character movement, player controls, and camera behavior influence each other and shape game feel.
• Proficiency in professional animation tools, with experience in keyframe animation and motion-capture editing.
• The ability to investigate animation problems, explain their likely causes, and work with design and engineering partners to deliver effective solutions.
• Strong ownership, clear communication, and a consistent record of delivering work within production constraints.

What Will Set You Apart

• Hands-on experience on recent AAA FPS productions with a high standard of player movement, first-person animation, and combat responsiveness.
• Direct involvement in establishing or evolving 3C animation systems, particularly from early development through production.
• Additional experience on AAA action or action-adventure games involving sophisticated traversal, melee combat, or character interactions.
• A technical animation background that enables you to understand and resolve issues across animation assets, runtime systems, and gameplay logic.
• Experience with techniques such as inverse kinematics, motion matching, procedural animation, motion warping, or animation retargeting.
• Scripting or tool-development experience that improves animation workflows and iteration speed.
• Experience maintaining consistency between first-person presentation and third-person character animation.

Senior / Lead Expectations
Senior: Independently own complex animation features, make sound creative and technical decisions, and drive implementation and polish with cross-disciplinary partners.
Lead: Combine strong individual delivery with the ability to guide others, align animation work with gameplay goals, and maintain quality across interconnected features.