Senior Technical Animator

LEGO Digital Play; Greater London; On-site; Confidential; Full time

Job summary

LEGO Digital Play is seeking a Senior Technical Animator to support exploratory research into digital LEGO building. This foundational role focuses on character rigging, technical animation systems, and collaboration with engineering and research teams.

The ideal candidate has strong experience in rigging and animation, a degree in Computer Science or a related field, and is familiar with Autodesk Maya and game engines like Unity or Unreal Engine. This position offers a unique opportunity to shape digital experiences for LEGO.

Qualifications

• Senior-level technical animator with hands-on rigging expertise.
• Strong animation skills in procedural and runtime animation systems.
• Fluent in at least one DCC application, preferably Autodesk Maya.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain animation rigs with a focus on modularity.
• Develop technical animation systems for real-time use.
• Prototype animation mechanics for rapid experimentation.

Skills

Rigging Expertise

Technical Animation Skills

Collaboration Skills

Prototyping Skills

Education

Degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Autodesk Maya

Unity

Unreal Engine

Job description

LEGO Digital Play will bring the LEGO brand into digital entertainment in new, innovative, and wholly-owned ways. Our mission is to ensure the LEGO Brand remains as powerfully a part of children’s lives in the coming decades as it has ever been. We aim to reach every kid on the planet, their parents, and adult fans of LEGO—and provide them with meaningful, magical, and playful new experiences. We are at the earliest phases of this new company, offering a unique opportunity to build a new entity for the world's most beloved and trusted brand. Our culture is open, collaborative, intellectually rigorous, and creatively vibrant.

The Central Technology team is the engineering heart of LEGO Digital Play, a venture within the LEGO ecosystem dedicated to pioneering creative and joyful digital experiences. Our teams build the foundational platforms, tools, and capabilities that power LEGO's digital future. We work at the intersection of play, applied AI, and developer tooling to bring the LEGO brand to a new generation of digital builders. It's a rare opportunity to shape something from the ground up within one of the world's most loved brands.

Role Summary

We are looking for a Senior Technical Animator to join our Central Technology team; this is a newly‑created role that will support exploratory research into creative systems and their application to digital LEGO building. The work is prototype‑driven, exploratory and collaborative, supporting software engineering and internal clients. This is a founding, hands‑on role that sits at the intersection of Character Rigging, DCC and Engine Tooling, and Research.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain rigs with a strong focus on robustness, modularity, and reuse
• Develop technical animation systems for real-time use, including procedural animation, secondary motion, IK and constraint setups and state‑driven runtime behaviour.
• Stand up and iterate on rigging and animation pipelines and tooling across DCC applications and game engines, including reliable DCC-to-engine animation turnaround.
• Act as the technical animation counterpart to engineering and research, advising on feasibility, constraints and integration paths for rigging and animation into interactive systems.
• Prototype animation mechanics and in‑engine interactions to support rapid experimentation, contributing prototype‑level implementations where needed.
• Navigate ambiguity independently and raise the technical bar through reviews and shared practice, communicating trade‑offs and decisions clearly

Required Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, STEM field, Games Art and Design, or equivalent practical experience.
• Senior‑level technical animator, or technical artist with a deep rigging focus, with strong autonomy and comfort operating in loosely defined problem spaces.
• Deep, hands‑on rigging expertise spanning character and mechanical rigging, and their integration in interactive environments
• Strong technical animation skills, including procedural and runtime animation systems, secondary motion and their runtime requirements
• Fluent in at least one DCC application and its procedural and rigging tools, with Autodesk Maya or Side Effects Houdini preferred.
• Comfortable with at least one game engine and DCC-to-engine asset and animation turnaround (Unity or Unreal Engine), including their animation and rigging runtime systems.
• Extensive experience in the games or visual effects industry, able to move fluidly between data, tooling, rigs, assets and game engines.
• Pragmatic, exploratory mindset, biased toward prototyping, iteration, learning and sharing findings.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills across technical and non‑technical audiences, including research, product and studio partners.
• Comfortable operating in early‑stage environments where standards and practices are still being established.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with ML-driven or data‑driven animation, such as motion capture, motion matching or learned animation systems.
• Plugin or tool development for DCC applications and/or game engine editors.
• Real‑time VFX and procedural content experience.
• Comfortable prototyping and modifying in‑game and game‑system interactions in Unity or Unreal Engine.
• Experience with mobile development.
• Experience defining or evolving technical standards, such as rig conventions, skeleton and naming schemas, versioned formats and reusable abstractions.
• Mentoring or influencing across technical and creative teams, and an interest in contributing to wider team development.