Principal Animation Engineer - Central Tech
About the role
Activision’s Central Animation Technology Group is looking for a dedicated Principal Animation Engineer to join our growing team focused on the future of Animation in our games. Our group’s goal is to make radical improvements to the way our characters move and behave. We are seeking engineers with a passion for realistic human and creature movement. The successful candidate will be ready to tackle the wide variety of engineering challenges vital to deliver believability and style across diverse situations and game modes. This role has flexibility to be based in one of our Studios in the United States or Europe. Work arrangements may change at the company's discretion to meet business needs. (Remote work eligibility included)
Responsibilities
- Work with animators and other engineers to research, design, prototype, and implement new features to continuously improve our character fidelity and believability at ever increasing scale and complexity.
- Develop and upgrade workflows to allow the efficient building, improvement and debugging of animation behaviors by animators and engineers alike.
- Support and proactively collaborate with team members at Activision studios across the world.
Requirements
- 15+ years of professional programming experience with a focus on skeletal animation.
- Proficiency in C/C++ in multithreaded environments
- Passion for advancing high-fidelity interactive animation in AAA games.
- Strong 3D math and linear algebra.
- Experience working directly on low-level game animation systems.
- Good knowledge of animation topics such as inverse kinematics, blend trees, ragdolls, state machines and secondary motion techniques.
- Capable and eager to take a leading role on projects.
- Multitasking: ability to work on multiple tech threads with different teams
Qualifications
- Credited on 3 or more AAA game titles for PC or consoles.
- Familiarity with content creation tools such as Maya.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance;
- 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching;
- Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave;
- Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others;
- If the Company requires that you move geographic locations for the job, then you may also be eligible for relocation assistance.
- Eligibility to participate in these benefits may vary for part time and temporary full-time employees and interns with the Company.
Pay
In the U.S., the standard base pay range for this role is $171,100.00 - $316,576.00 Annual. These values reflect the expected base pay range of new hires across all U.S. locations. Ultimately, your specific range and offer will be based on several factors, including relevant experience, performance, and work location. Your Talent Professional can share this role’s range details for your local geography during the hiring process. In addition to a competitive base pay, employees in this role may be eligible for incentive compensation. Incentive compensation is not guaranteed. While we strive to provide competitive offers to successful candidates, new hire compensation is negotiable.