Technical Animator - EA Sports Tech

Job Description

Senior Technical Animator – A-Team

Vancouver, Canada or Remote in North America
Our Character Animation Research Team (known as the A-Team) is a small team based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

We are a cross-functional, applied R&D team, strategically positioned in EA to drive and disrupt the future of character animation technology. We are a self-motivated, collaborative team, empowered to constantly explore and leverage the latest innovations across the fields of animation, rigging, physics, and machine learning. Our technology has been used to create next-generation gameplay realism across EA titles such as FIFA, Madden, NHL, UFC, Battlefield, and many others.

We of course make sure to have tons of fun, with dedicated time each day to hang out and play the games that we love! Join us in helping shape the future of how games are made!

We are looking for a talented and experienced Senior Animator to join the A-Team. Our ideal candidate is, like us, passionate about making games in a collaborative environment with a team of veteran developers. You will be responsible for driving and owning the runtime initiative of our team. This includes crafting high quality prototypes to showcase the innovation of our projects and providing guidance on next-gen animation workflows and tools we are building.

Your Responsibilities
• ​Become a master of EA's proprietary Frostbite Animation System, as well as new cutting edge technologies developed by the team.
• Collaborate with partner game teams to solve unique animation challenges.
• Design and create high quality technical demos utilizing our team's technology.
• Work side-by-side with Engineers to provide technical animation guidance on R&D projects including procedural runtime systems, DCC, and Machine learning
• Create, edit, and implement unique animations to push the limits of our new technologies.
• Become a leader in the animation community at EA by working with partner game teams across the company, to teach how to use our new animation systems and tools, communicate feedback, and diagnose issues.
• Design and guide the UX for the animation tools in service of the broader animation community.
• Coordinate with QA to validate and maintain the high quality of our animation systems.
• Create and maintain documentation and tutorials to educate others about our team's unique technologies.
• Showcase our work by creating demos and giving presentations to the EA Animation community.
• Mentor junior animators within the A-team and in the larger EA Animation community.
• Aim to improve cross studio communication and team culture especially within the animation community.
• Report directly to the A-Team Animation Director to take advantage of any opportunities you find.

Your Qualifications
• 5+ years of experience of technical animation experience
• A strong understanding of animation principles and anatomy.
• A strong desire to push animation forward.
• Experience integrating animation content into a game engine.
• Experience troubleshooting and debugging runtime animation systems.
• Experience with motion capture and retargeting.
• Experience with creating animation pipelines and workflows.
• Proficient in standard industry tools such as Autodesk Maya.
• Experience working closely with other domains - especially Designers, Engineers and Artists
• Proactive work ethics, being able to identify problems and resolve them.

Bonus Qualifications
• Experience writing scripts/tools in Python is an asset.
• Experience creating animation rigs for games is an asset.
• MotionBuilder experience is an asset.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-ro9en1-3-144-233-150-42 in your application.