Senior Animation Engineer New Brighton, England, United Kingdom

As a Senior Animation Engineer you will set a high bar for code quality and bring a deep passion for character animation and the technology behind it. In this role you will own and continue the development of our core animation systems, tools, and pipelines, extending and maintaining the code of our technology while working closely with animators, character artists, technical artists, designers, and fellow engineers to bring our characters to life and deliver spectacular, believable animation for our games.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Work within Unreal Engine 5, adapting existing animation systems and building new technology to meet the project's technical and creative needs.
• Prototype and implement animation features and runtime systems (animation graphs, state machines, blending, layering).
• Build and maintain animation tools and pipelines that empower animators and technical artists to work efficiently.
• Work closely and constructively with animation, art, design, and engineering teams to realise creative ambitions.
• Support planning efforts by estimating and dependency-checking animation feature development.
• Identify technical and developmental risks/obstacles and generate solutions to overcome them.
• Research coding techniques and algorithms to stay current with technological developments and advancements in animation and the wider game industry.

Essential Skills, Attributes and Experience

• Demonstrable programming experience in a creative environment.
• Shipped one or more AAA game titles, ideally using Unreal Engine.
• Advanced proficiency in C++, linear algebra, and 3D maths, with strong familiarity with Object-Oriented design principles (OOP).
• Strong experience with Unreal Engine, Blueprints, and Unreal animation principles (Animation Blueprints, state machines, blend spaces, linked layers).
• Hands‑on implementation experience in one or more of the following: inverse kinematics techniques, ragdoll and physics‑based character animation, procedural animation techniques, keyframe animation and forward kinematics.
• Dedication to code quality and documentation, and the ability to learn and master new technologies and code.
• Ability to work independently and efficiently under deadlines.
• Effective communicator and collaborator across multi-disciplinary teams.

Highly Desirable

• Experience with machine-learning-driven animation techniques (e.g. motion matching, learned pose generation).
• Experience with Control Rig, IK Rig, and Motion Warping.
• Experience with new features like Mass locomotion, Mover and/or UAF/AnimNext.
• Strong familiarity with Data‑Oriented design principles (DOP).
• Hands‑on experience developing for Xbox Series X/S and PS5.

Hangar 13 prides itself on the diversity of its team members, partners, and communities. For this reason, we remain committed to providing equal employment opportunity in all aspects of the employment relationship, from recruitment and hiring through compensation, benefits, discipline and termination. As an equal opportunity employer, we are also committed to ensuring that qualified individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation(s) to participate in the job application and/or interview process, to perform their essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us if you need to request reasonable accommodation.