Remote Senior Animation Engineer — Unity ECS/DOTS

Lever, Inc.; Portugal; Remote; EUR 60,000 - 85,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Technical ownership

International team

Remote work

Flexible contracts

Annual retreats

Long-term collaboration

Job summary

Lever, Inc. is seeking a Senior Animation Engineer based in Portugal to lead the animation runtime development in a major Unity3D project.

You’ll own advanced workflows at the intersection of Animation, Technical Art, and Engineering, driving prototypes to production-ready features. You will collaborate with Animators, Technical Artists, Gameplay Engineers, and Rendering Engineers, shaping tools, architecture, and standards across the team while tackling complex technical challenges in a highly

Qualifications

• Strong C# and Unity engineering experience.
• Hands-on ECS/DOTS experience or data-oriented engine architecture.
• Strong understanding of animation runtimes (states, blends, layers, root motion).
• Practical experience with GPU skinning, deformation, and shaders.
• Experience creating Unity Editor tooling and production automations.
• Experience profiling/optimizing graphics and animation on mobile (Adreno/Mali).
• Familiarity with GLES/Vulkan and platform-specific considerations.
• Excellent communication and ability to work with artists and engineers.
• Fluent English.

Responsibilities

• Develop, maintain, and optimize animation runtime systems in Unity (state machines, blend trees, layers, masks, root motion, events, compression).
• Design and integrate data-oriented animation solutions using ECS/DOTS, Entities, Jobs, Burst, and baking workflows.
• Research and implement advanced animation tech (GPU skinning, deformation, compute/vertex shaders).
• Build Unity Editor tools, validators, asset processors, workflows, and production utilities.
• Support rigging, skeleton, skinning, and FBX workflows between Maya/Blender and Unity.
• Profile and optimize animation systems for mobile hardware (Adreno/Mali).
• Collaborate with Animators, Technical Artists, Gameplay Engineers, Rendering Engineers, and others.
• Lead technical investigations from prototypes to production-ready features.
• Establish documentation, reusable workflows, and technical standards.
• Balance animation quality, runtime performance, system complexity, and usability in architecture decisions.
• Review and improve existing animation systems and workflows.

Skills

C# Unity

ECS/DOTS

GPU skinning

Shader development

FBX pipelines

Editor tooling

Maya/Blender

Mobile optimization

Profiling

English fluency

Tools

Unity Editor

Maya

Blender

Shader Graph

Job description

Lever, Inc. is seeking a Senior Animation Engineer based in Portugal to lead the animation runtime development in a major Unity3D project.

You’ll own advanced workflows at the intersection of Animation, Technical Art, and Engineering, driving prototypes to production-ready features. You will collaborate with Animators, Technical Artists, Gameplay Engineers, and Rendering Engineers, shaping tools, architecture, and standards across the team while tackling complex technical challenges in a highly