Animation Director

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced and visionary Animation Director to lead our animation team and drive the animation direction for our games at EA SPORTS, one of the leading sports entertainment brands in the world. This hybrid role (3x per week) is located in Orlando, FL and may qualify for relocation assistance.

Responsibilities

• Define and deliver the vision and quality bar for all motion in the game.
• Drive animation quality while balancing performance, continuity, technical, scheduling, and budgetary requirements.
• Hire, mentor, guide, and manage the work of our exceptional animation team.
• Provide regular feedback and direction to the animation team.
• Drive the evolution of the animation pipeline and establish efficient animation workflows and procedures.

Collaboration

• Work with Creative and Art leadership to define the overall animation direction, style, quality, and execution.
• Collaborate with Design and Engineering to ensure motion meets gameplay, responsiveness, and player-experience requirements.
• Partner with technical animators, character riggers, and modelers to maintain a consistently high quality bar in motion.
• Engage with graphics engineers to ground characters in the world through lighting, shadows, visual effects, weather, and environmental interaction.
• Work with physics engineers to ensure characters operate within defined physical rules and interact believably with other characters and the environment.

Requirements

• A great eye for style, performance, and quality, combined with strong technical understanding.
• Passion for innovation and continuous improvement.
• 5+ years as a senior animation contributor or leader, including experience directing animation on high-quality AAA games.
• Strong leadership, people-management, communication, and mentoring skills.
• Ability to inspire and lead a team to deliver high-quality work on time and within budget.
• Skill in guiding a team to balance creative ambition with technical and production requirements.
• Experience and confidence directing actors and athletes for motion capture.
• A collaborative, motivated, and accountable approach to team leadership.
• Strong knowledge of current animation practices, technologies, and industry trends.
• Experience directing or working with real-time animation systems, including blend trees, state machines, motion-matching systems, or comparable runtime solutions, in engines such as Unreal Engine, Unity, Frostbite, or other proprietary technology.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience evaluating and applying emerging animation technologies, including machine learning, procedural animation, performance capture, and automation tools, to improve quality or production efficiency.
• A passion for sports and strong knowledge of American football.
• Technical fluency with scripting, tools, or engine workflows that supports effective collaboration with engineers and technical teams.

About Electronic Arts

We value adaptability, resilience, creativity, and curiosity. From leadership that brings out your potential, to creating space for learning and experimenting, we empower you to do great work and pursue opportunities for growth. We adopt a holistic approach to our benefits programs, emphasizing physical, emotional, financial, career, and community wellness to support a balanced life. Our packages are tailored to meet local needs and may include healthcare coverage, mental well-being support, retirement savings, paid time off, family leaves, complimentary games, and more.