Robotics Animation & Rigging Intern

Content Creators; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Human Computer Lab is seeking a technical animator to rig LeLamp and own the animation pipeline for a consumer robotics platform. You will work with the CEO and engineers to translate design intent into motion that runs on hardware, not just in a viewport.

You should bring a strong rigging portfolio, proficiency in Maya or Blender, and experience with real-time engines or robotics simulators. This role offers a hands-on, cross-disciplinary environment in a small team.

Qualifications

• Professional experience as a technical animator or rigger with a strong rigging and animation portfolio.
• Fluent in Maya, Blender, or similar DCC tools and can build production-quality rigs from scratch.
• Understand animation principles such as timing, weight, anticipation, and follow-through.
• Experience rigging mechanical or non-organic subjects with real-world constraints.
• Strong intuition for making motion feel alive rather than mechanical.
• Experience building pipelines in new environments.
• Experience animating robots, mechanical characters, or non-humanoid subjects.
• Exposure to procedural animation, motion graphs, or behavior trees.
• Familiar with URDF, ROS, or simulators such as Gazebo, MuJoCo, or Isaac Sim.
• Experience in Unity, Unreal, or other real-time animation environments.
• Experience collaborating with engineering teams on hardware or robotics projects.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain the robot rig, defining joint hierarchies, constraints, and control structures aligned with hardware limits
• Design and animate behaviors including idle motion, reactions, transitions, gestures, and interaction sequences
• Work with controls and firmware engineers to translate animation intent into real robot motion
• Stay aligned with mechanical updates and maintain the rig as the platform evolves
• Maintain a URDF-compatible or simulation-ready representation of the robot
• Help define the robot’s motion language and expressive vocabulary
• Build internal tools, workflows, and documentation for the animation pipeline
• Evaluate animations on physical hardware and iterate until intent translates reliably

Skills

Rigging portfolio

Animation design

Team collaboration

Pipeline prototyping

Motion language

Tools

Maya

Blender

Unity

Unreal

URDF

ROS

Gazebo

MuJoCo

Isaac Sim

Job description

Human Computer Lab is seeking a technical animator to rig LeLamp and own the animation pipeline for a consumer robotics platform. You will work with the CEO and engineers to translate design intent into motion that runs on hardware, not just in a viewport.

You should bring a strong rigging portfolio, proficiency in Maya or Blender, and experience with real-time engines or robotics simulators. This role offers a hands-on, cross-disciplinary environment in a small team.