Senior Robot Animator

skildai-careers; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Skild AI in California seeks a Senior Robot Animator to bring robots to life, rig, animate, and refine motion for simulation and physical machines. This animation-first role emphasizes craft, with collaboration across robotics, simulation, and hardware teams.

You will build motion libraries, retarget captured data, and contribute to previz and design studies. The ideal candidate has 5+ years of professional animation experience, plus expertise in Maya or Blender and strong weight and timing

Qualifications

• 5+ years animating professionally in film/VFX, games, or robotics.
• Expert keyframe animation with a strong sense of weight, timing, and body mechanics.
• Rigging experience with mechanical or articulated characters: constraints, IK/FK, joint limits, mechanism-accurate setups.
• Comfortable cleaning, editing, and retargeting motion capture onto non-human skeletons.
• Background working with humanoid or robotic characters in simulation or the real world.
• Familiarity with controls/rigid-body dynamics/simulation is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Author robot motion in Maya (or Blender) using keyframe, procedural, and capture-based techniques.
• Work with robotics engineers to take motion from digital content creation to real hardware.
• Choreograph and time performances, including multi-robot sequences and motion cut to music or camera.
• Deliver finished rendered work as well as sequences performed by the machines themselves.
• Build motion libraries and retargeting that support our simulation and machine learning work.
• Partner with our hardware teams on previz and range-of-motion studies that inform design.

Skills

Keyframe Animation

Rigging

Motion Capture

Robot Animation

Simulation

Weight & Timing

Tools

Maya

Blender

Job description

Company Overview

At Skild AI, we are building the world's first general purpose robotic intelligence that is robust and adapts to unseen scenarios without failing. We believe massive scale through data-driven machine learning is the key to unlocking these capabilities for the widespread deployment of robots within society. Our team consists of individuals with varying levels of experience and backgrounds, from new graduates to domain experts. Relevant industry experience is important, but ultimately less so than your demonstrated abilities and attitude. We are looking for passionate individuals who are eager to explore uncharted waters and contribute to our innovative projects.

Position Overview

We're looking for a Senior Robot Animator to help bring our robots to life. In this role, you'll work closely with our robotics, simulation, and hardware teams to rig, animate, and refine motion that runs both in simulation and on physical machines, supporting a range of teams and programs across the company. This is an animation-first role focused on the computer graphics side of motion - rigging, keyframe animation, body mechanics, and the editing and retargeting of captured data. Strong candidates pair animation craft with an intuition for what a physical robot can actually execute.

Responsibilities

• Author robot motion in Maya (or Blender) using keyframe, procedural, and capture-based techniques
• Work with our robotics engineers to take motion from digital content creation (DCC) to real hardware
• Choreograph and time performances, including multi-robot sequences and motion cut to music or camera
• Deliver finished rendered work as well as sequences performed by the machines themselves
• Build motion libraries and retargeting that support our simulation and machine learning work
• Partner with our hardware teams on previz and range-of-motion studies that inform design

Preferred Qualifications

• 5+ years animating professionally in film/VFX, games, or robotics, or equivalent senior-level experience - demo reel required
• Expert keyframe animation with a strong sense of weight, timing, and body mechanics
• Rigging experience with mechanical or articulated characters: constraints, IK/FK, joint limits, mechanism-accurate setups
• Comfortable cleaning, editing, and retargeting motion capture onto non-human skeletons
• Background working with humanoid or robotic characters in simulation or the real world
• Familiarity with controls/rigid-body dynamics/simulation is a plus

Base Salary Range $100,000 - $300,000 USD