Senior Animator — Hybrid, High-Impact Gameplay

Electronic Arts; Redwood City (CA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Job summary

Electronic Arts seeks a Senior Animator to lead gameplay animation across locomotion, combat, and character performance within a hybrid Redwood City environment. You will mentor teams, shape animation standards, and collaborate with Art Direction to ensure a cohesive visual experience.

Ideal candidates bring 8+ years in AAA games, a strong reel, and proficiency in Maya/Blender/ZBrush, Substances, and Unreal/Unity engines. This role offers cross-location work with Montreal or Vancouver options.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience in AAA game development with 8+ years of professional animation experience and shipped console or PC titles.
• Strong demo reel showing high-quality gameplay animation, locomotion, combat, reactions, and character performance.
• Experience with standard tools such as Maya, Blender, ZBrush, Substance 3D, Marvelous Designer, or comparable software.
• Experience working in Unreal, Unity, Frostbite, or another modern proprietary engine.
• Experience mentoring animators, leading animation reviews, and providing craft direction is expected; experience managing small internal or external animation teams is a strong plus.
• Expert understanding of animation fundamentals including posing, timing, spacing, weight, impact, and motion clarity.
• Strong experience implementing animation directly in a real-time game engine, including state machines, blending, motion matching, IK, or comparable runtime systems.
• Strong understanding of how animation supports gameplay responsiveness, readability, camera, controls, and player feedback.
• Experience adapting animation across different game genres, including action-focused experiences, character types, camera perspectives, and gameplay needs.

Responsibilities

• Create high-quality gameplay animation across locomotion, traversal, combat, reactions, interactions, and character performance.
• Establish the animation quality bar, movement principles, and production standards, while providing mentorship, feedback, and craft direction as the discipline grows.
• Partner closely with Art Direction and Design to define posing, timing, weight, impact, responsiveness, and gameplay readability.
• Support playable demos and vertical slices by taking animation from early exploration through polished in-engine implementation.
• Collaborate with Technical Animation and Engineering on runtime animation systems, state machines, blending, procedural solutions, and scalable workflows.
• Help define the project's animation style and motion language, ensuring character movement and interaction feel cohesive with the overall visual direction, character personality, and gameplay goals.
• Lead animation reviews across internal and external production, ensuring work consistently meets the established creative and technical quality bar.

Skills

AAA game development

Demo reel

Maya/Blender/ZBrush

Substance 3D/Marvelous Designer

Unreal/Unity/Frostbite

Mentoring

Animation fundamentals

Runtime animation systems

Gameplay responsiveness

Tools

Maya

Blender

ZBrush

Substance 3D

Marvelous Designer

Job description

Electronic Arts seeks a Senior Animator to lead gameplay animation across locomotion, combat, and character performance within a hybrid Redwood City environment. You will mentor teams, shape animation standards, and collaborate with Art Direction to ensure a cohesive visual experience.

Ideal candidates bring 8+ years in AAA games, a strong reel, and proficiency in Maya/Blender/ZBrush, Substances, and Unreal/Unity engines. This role offers cross-location work with Montreal or Vancouver options.