Senior Technical Animator - Unannounced Project

At Zynga, we bring people together through the power of play. As a global leader in interactive entertainment and a proud label of Take-Two Interactive, our games have been downloaded over 6 billion times—connecting players in 175+ countries through fun, strategy, and a little friendly competition.

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Founded in 2007 and headquartered in California, our teams span North America, Europe, and Asia, working together to craft unforgettable gaming experiences. Whether you're spinning, strategizing, matching, or competing, Zynga is where fun meets innovation—and where you can take your career to the next level.

Join us and be part of the play!

At NaturalMotion, we make games that wow people. We innovate to create previously impossible experiences that would not exist without us. We take pride in making titles that reach a large audience and creating communities that last. Our commitment to excellence has earned us recognition as one of the UK's Best Places to Work in games for eight consecutive years by gamesindustry.biz, and we're proud to be part of the Zynga and Take-Two Interactive family

We are looking for a Senior Technical Animator to join our team in supporting our next unannounced project. You will work alongside the Animation Team helping to deliver and bring to life our amazing characters.

We embrace a hybrid work environment. Within this role, you would work 2 days per week in our London office and the remaining days at home.

• →Responsible for creating and maintaining the rigging and technical animation pipeline for the projects.
• →As part of the Animation Team, you will play a key role in implementing characters.
• →Reporting to the Lead Animator and Art Director.

• Demonstrate expert knowledge of the skeletal pipeline from Rigging to exporting finalised characters into game, with a speciality of understanding mobile limitations (both bipedal and non-bipedal).
• Expert in how animation systems work in Unreal Engine, debug, modify and being able to create them in game engines from scratch.
• Have expert knowledge of retargeting and shared skeleton pipeline, both in and out of engine and can expand into retargeting between non matching skeletons.
• Understand the setup of cloth sim and dynamics in both Engine and 3D software, the application of such and the requirements and limitations of its use on mobile.
• Proficient in 3D software relevant scripting languages; MEL, Python, Max Script, etc.
• Foundational knowledge of rigging; using bones, IK, Splines, Blend Shapes, Skinning, node editing and setting up animation blueprints in Unreal.
• Have advanced knowledge of major third party rigging systems used in the industry; Advanced Skeleton, Rapid Rig, mGear etc.
• Experience in animation systems that are scalable and able to work on a wide range of mobile devices.
• Complete ownership of pipeline with good documentation and communication.

• Premium character presentation pipelines - build and own animation systems for high-value front-end moments, ensuring characters are always presented at a premium quality bar.
• Automated optimization techniques for the creation of LODs.
• Support a fast paced character pipeline in the delivery of characters per season.
• Able to demonstrate knowledge of Facial Rigging processes, game engine compatible solutions and how to implement them.
• Experience with motion capture, cleanup and application to different characters.
• Knowledge of procedural animation systems.
• Experience in other areas of technical art e.g. Shaders, Lighting Tech, VFX.