Lead Technical Animator

The Role

As the Lead Technical Animator, you will spearhead efforts to enhance the quality and efficiency of our character, animation, and supporting pipelines. This pivotal role bridges the gap between art, animation, and technology, ensuring the development, integration, and delivery of high-quality character, animation, and technical solutions across the project. Your work will ensure that animations and characters are not only visually stunning but also seamlessly functional within the engine, providing players with an engaging and immersive experience. This is a new project, being built in UE5, this role offers an exciting opportunity to have a significant influence on the foundational technology and evolving look and feel of the game.

What you’ll be doing

On a day-to-day basis, you will:

• Apply your technical expertise directly in creating, developing, and managing our character and animation pipeline – from DCC to engine.
• Devise, assist and implement character and animation systems, rigs, tools, and pipelines.
• Collaborate and work closely with animators, motion capture technicians, artists, technical artists, and engineers, in helping deliver engaging and immersive characters.
• Review existing workflows, tools, and systems, identifying and solving technical challenges within the animation pipeline.
• Research emerging technologies; improving efficiency and quality of our character and animation assets and pipeline.
• Adapt to learn new skills that will help elevate and offer new solutions to meet the design, gameplay, and project requirements.
• Tackle day-to-day requests for improvements and bug fixes.

What we are looking for

Essential

• A passion for games and games animation
• Strong ability to communicate clear direction, break down tasks and feedback to help mentor, guide and educate fellow teammates.
• Experience with commonly used DCCs such as Maya & MoBu
• Excellent knowledge of Python and coding standards
• Excellent knowledge of complex rigging systems
• Excellent understanding of in-engine character and animation systems – locomotion, modular character setups, runtime deformation and physics
• Previously worked on AAA titles in an equivalent role.

Desirable

• Solid understanding of 3D math (linear algebra, vector and matrix math)
• Experience with Unreal Engine
• Experience with complex face rig setup - FACs based.
• Experience with C++ /Maya API & Plugin writing
• Experience with 3DS Max & Blender
• Experience with motion capture pipelines and shoots

About Creative Assembly

Creative Assembly crafts deep and detailed games that last, entertaining millions of players across the globe for decades. We are all game makers and we care deeply about the experiences we create. We empower our teams to make significant contributions to our games, supported by skills development and growth opportunities. We are located in Horsham, UK and Sofia, Bulgaria.

Most roles at Creative Assembly are hybrid; what this looks like will be discussed during the interview process. For many teams this is 3 days a week in the studio. CA has the right to change requirements based on the needs of the business.

We offer many benefits to support you and your family including:

• Additional medical and dental health insurance for you, your partner and kids, life in-surance, and free health care screening
• Additional holiday allowance plus full studio closure over the Christmas and New Year period, as all Bulgarian Bank holidays
• Annual discretionary studio bonus
• Defined career development pathways and personalised training support including; SEGA Dev Day, internal masterclasses, prestigious creative workshops, on-site training with renowned specialists and global conference attendance
• Wellbeing support with an employee assistance programme
• Free games and merchandise plus access to our extensive games library
• Free breakfast every day - toast, cereals, yoghurts, fresh fruit, soft drinks and more in our fully stocked kitchen
• Office massages
• Studio parties for you and your family; such as our Summer and Christmas parties, Children’s day party, wrap parties for game releases