Senior Technical Animator

Job Description

Your Platform

Founded in 2002, Infinity Ward is the original studio behind the Call of Duty® franchise. The titles developed by Infinity Ward have won more than 200 ''Game of the Year'' awards and 100 ''Editor's Choice'' awards, among many other industry accolades. Some of our previous titles include: Call of Duty®: Ghosts, Call of Duty®: Infinite Warfare and most recently, Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare. Infinity Ward employs more than 250 people in Woodland Hills, Calif., just outside of Los Angeles.

A critically acclaimed studio, Infinity Ward is proud to have one of the most passionate and talented development teams in the industry. We love to have as much fun as the games we create, and it shows in our relaxed, yet diligent, workplace environment. We believe that making the best games relies on having the best people, so we like to look after ours. We enjoy having fun with top-notch events that everyone gets involved with.

Infinity Ward is wholly owned by Activision. To learn more about our studio, please visit us at https://www.infinityward.com/, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/InfinityWard/, and @InfinityWard on Twitter.

Your Mission

As a Senior Technical Animator, you will help us design and advance our world-class rigging and animation tools suite that has bridged the gap between our incredible art team and our extraordinary animator team, resulting in highly realistic character animations with plausible deformations.

The Technical Animation team is tasked with supporting and advancing the rigging tools and solutions used by every animation team at Infinity Ward, from Narrative and AI to Gameplay and Mocap, ensuring that all tools and rigs are flexible enough to meet each team's unique needs but structurally sound enough to scale to accommodate the throughput needed for production.

Priorities can often change in a fast-paced environment like ours, so this role includes, but is not limited to, the following responsibilities:
• Create rigs and rigging systems for characters, weapons, vehicles, props, and creatures
• Problem solve and debug issues that arise, both on tools and on the engine side.
• Maintain a close working relationship with the animation team, understanding their needs and limitations when setting up character rigs
• Communicating and collaborating with internal teams to pitch, design and implement new technologies.

Player Profile

Minimum Requirements:
• +6 years of working in a rigging, technical animation or tools engineering team in games, film, or a similar field
• Familiarity with 3D Math / Linear Algebra as it relates to constructing rigging solutions
• Well-versed in Rigging and Skinning/Weighting for games
• Strong communication, self-management, and organizational skills.
• Expert working relationship in Python – specifically as it applies to programming in Maya and creating rigging systems.
• Experience in software best practices and design patterns
• Excellent Maya technical skills
• Strong interest in tool usability and GUI frameworks (Qt, PySide, PyQt)
• Advocator of communication, documentation, and organization
• C++ and plug-in development a welcomed bonus
• Passion for games

Subject to eligibility requirements, the Company offers comprehensive benefits including:
• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance;
• 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching;
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave;
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others;
• If the Company requires that you move geographic locations for the job, then you may also be eligible for relocation assistance.

Eligibility to participate in these benefits may vary for part time and temporary full-time employees and interns with the Company. You can learn more by visiting https://www.benefitsforeveryworld.com/.

In the US, the standard base pay range for this role is $80,800.00 - $149,400.00 Annual. These values reflect the expected base pay range of new hires across all US locations. Ultimately, your specific range and offer will be based on several factors, including relevant experience, performance, and work location. Your Talent Professional can share this role's range details for your local geography during the hiring process. In addition to a competitive base pay, employees in this role may be eligible for incentive compensation. Incentive compensation is not guaranteed.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-gp3709-3-144-17-45-42 in your application.