Cinematic Technical Animator - Narrative Tools Lead

Ghost Story Games; Massachusetts; On-site; USD 71,000 - 123,000; Full time

Job summary

Ghost Story Games is seeking a Cinematic Technical Animator to contribute to Judas, bringing expertise in scripting and storytelling to develop dynamic cinematic systems. You will work with cross-disciplinary teams to deliver emotionally resonant content and refined character animation at scale.

The role emphasizes collaboration, debugging, and hands-on implementation, with a focus on timing, pacing, and narrative delivery for narrative-first shooter experiences.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of development experience in the game industry with recent hands-on implementation experience.
• Strong understanding of timing and pacing of narrative delivery.
• Contributed to at least one shipped title recognized for its strong narrative and/or mission design.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and organizational skills.
• Excellent visual scripting and/or programming skills.
• Strong investigative and debugging skills.
• Passion for narrative first-person shooters.

Responsibilities

• Design extensible pipelines and tooling for cinematic and narrative content, enabling cross-disciplinary teams to deliver high-quality experiences with minimal engineering support.
• Lead efforts involving animation blueprints, animation montages, level sequences, and blueprint scripting to support both gameplay and cinematic goals.
• Provide technical direction for character animation integration and runtime control, focusing on improving emotional fidelity and storytelling impact.
• Collaborate closely with audio, lighting, animation, and narrative design teams to build systems that unify presentation layers and enhance dramatic storytelling.
• Drive performance optimization, reliability, and scalability of all cinematic systems to support long-term project goals and creative iteration.

Skills

Narrative scripting

Animation pipelines

Communication

Debugging

Team collaboration

Tools

Perforce

Blueprint scripting

Job description

Ghost Story Games is seeking a Cinematic Technical Animator to contribute to Judas, bringing expertise in scripting and storytelling to develop dynamic cinematic systems. You will work with cross-disciplinary teams to deliver emotionally resonant content and refined character animation at scale.

The role emphasizes collaboration, debugging, and hands-on implementation, with a focus on timing, pacing, and narrative delivery for narrative-first shooter experiences.