Animation jobs in United States

As Lead Animator, you’ll drive the animation quality, direction, and workflows across a range of high-end game projects. You’ll lead a team of animators delivering fluid, expressive, and technically sound character, creature, and gameplay animations, whether fully keyframed or motion-capture based.

You’ll lead an internal project and help establish scalable animation pipelines, documentation, and quality standards that will support future outsourcing and co-development (co-dev) partnerships with global clients. Working closely with the global leadership team based in the U.S., you’ll help facilitate cross-studio collaboration, ensuring creative alignment and consistent production standards across regions.

Resumes are required to be submitted in English.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the creation of high-quality keyframe and motion capture animations for characters, creatures, and gameplay systems.
• Define and maintain the animation vision, quality bar, and technical consistency across projects.
• Collaborate with Design, Tech Art, Rigging, and Engineering to integrate animation smoothly into gameplay and narrative systems.
• Review internal and outsourced animation work, providing clear, constructive feedback to maintain AAA quality benchmarks.
• Troubleshoot animation, rigging, and implementation issues, and partner with Tech Art to drive continuous pipeline improvements.
• Mentor and guide a team of animators, supporting their development and onboarding.
• Partner with production to accurately scope animation deliverables, identify dependencies, and mitigate risks.
• Maintain project documentation, style guides, and communication with client-side animation leads or directors.
• Attend internal and external meetings, occasionally outside standard business hours, as needed to support project and business goals.

Requirement:

• 5+ years of professional animation experience in game development, with at least 2 years in a lead or senior role.
• Proven experience delivering AAA-quality gameplay and cinematic animation.
• Advanced proficiency in Maya or MotionBuilder, with a strong grasp of animation principles, body mechanics, timing.
• Hands‑on experience with Unreal Engine (4/5) and/or Unity, including animation blueprints, state machines, and real‑time implementation.
• Experience with both keyframe and mocap cleanup and retargeting workflows.
• Strong collaboration skills working with Tech Art, Rigging, and Design teams.
• Excellent communication and leadership skills in English, with experience mentoring and directing distributed teams.
• Prior experience with outsourcing or co‑development projects preferred.

Your application will include the following questions:

• Which of the following statements best describes your right to work in Malaysia?
• What's your expected monthly basic salary?
• Which of the following types of qualifications do you have?
• How many years' experience do you have as an animator?

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