Senior Character Tools Engineer — AI/ML Pipelines

Sony Playstation; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 144,000 - 216,000; Full time

Job summary

Sony Interactive Entertainment seeks a Lead Character Tools Engineer to join the PlayStation Central Technology team. You will prototype, develop, and deploy tools for character creation, rigging, and animation pipelines, collaborating with engineers, artists, and researchers to streamline runtime workflows.

The role emphasizes expertise in Maya, C++, and agentic AI-driven tooling, with opportunities to advance tools across native runtimes and game engines.

Qualifications

• Experience as technical artist or engineer to develop and deploy tools to support character creation, rigging, simulation, or animation pipelines in a run-time environment.
• 10+ years in a game development studio or previous experience creating artist-facing tools on technical art or engineering team in a production environment.
• BS degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Graphic Art, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Extensive experience in working with game editors and excellent working knowledge of technical specifications of workflow from DCC to complex real-time environments.
• Capable of writing and debugging C++
• Excellent knowledge of Maya with general knowledge of Maya rigging
• Developing or maintaining project pipeline tools and system environments
• Excellent troubleshooting skills and the ability to creatively solve problems
• Experience leveraging Agentic AI models
• Strong understanding of deformation and mesh processing
• Familiarity with industry trends in character rigging, gameplay animation, cinematic animation, deformation and simulation usage in character animation pipelines
• Decent sense of humor

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with internal team members and studio stakeholders to prototype and harden create tools considering contemporary development workflows, data management, art creation, animation, and game engine integration
• Setting up and maintaining project specific environments and automation opportunities
• Learning and supporting varying client working environments, assets, and tools
• Writing, maintaining, and customizing internal tools and workflows
• Building and maintaining technical documentation
• Willingness to attend and participate in PlayStation internal demonstrations and conferences, travel required
• Ability to work in a collaborative team environment as well as self-driven experimentation and research

Skills

C++

Python

AI models

Team collaboration

Maya knowledge

Rigging

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

Maya

MotionBuilder

Houdini

PyQt/PySide

Perforce

Git

Confluence

HLSL

MaterialX

Job description

Sony Interactive Entertainment seeks a Lead Character Tools Engineer to join the PlayStation Central Technology team. You will prototype, develop, and deploy tools for character creation, rigging, and animation pipelines, collaborating with engineers, artists, and researchers to streamline runtime workflows.

The role emphasizes expertise in Maya, C++, and agentic AI-driven tooling, with opportunities to advance tools across native runtimes and game engines.