Staff Motion Designer - 3D

Posted October 10 • Locations: San Francisco, CA; New York, NY; Portland, OR; or Remote in Canada • Full‑time • Hybrid

About the role

Mercury is looking for a Staff Motion Designer to own motion at Mercury, from launch films and product videos that introduce our biggest bets, to the systems and standards that define how motion looks and feels across every surface. This is the most senior craft role on the team: someone who sets the bar through their own work. You'll move fluidly between 3D worlds, materials, and textures for our highest-profile brand moments, and the day-to-day motion, UI, and interaction work that makes Mercury feel considered everywhere it shows up. You'll also help define how AI fits into a motion practice at Mercury — using it to move faster on pre-vis, iteration, and asset generation, while knowing exactly where craft still has to be done by hand.

Responsibilities

• Lead motion concepts for major product launches, campaigns, and brand moments, with strong 3D capability across product visualization, environments, objects, and brand worlds.
• Build 3D worlds, materials, and textures that give Mercury's biggest launches and brand moments a distinct, recognizable feel.
• Lead product storytelling, title design, typography, transitions, diagrams, and UI motion, turning complex products into simple, compelling visual stories.
• Define and build out Mercury's motion design system: principles for typography, pacing, transitions, product UI, sound, and interaction, plus reusable behaviors and templates that don't feel templated.
• Explore motion in interactive contexts, and bring an informed point of view on where AI tooling can extend the team's speed and craft without flattening it.
• Build and champion AI-assisted workflows for motion and 3D, from generative pre-vis and storyboarding to texture, world, and asset generation, and share what's working with the rest of Brand Studio.
• Evaluate new AI creative tools as they emerge and make the call on which are worth adopting into the team's pipeline versus which compromise craft.
• Partner with Design, Writing, Narrative, and Production from concept through delivery, and act as a key cross-functional player on the brand's biggest moments.
• Personally lead high-level 3D and motion craft while art-directing specialist animators, 3D artists, and studios when additional depth or scale is needed.
• Raise the motion craft of the broader Brand Studio through partnership, critique, and example: set the standard by doing the work, not just defining it.
• Protect craft and coherence across every moving expression of the brand, from a 30-second launch film to a UI micro-interaction.

Requirements

• 10+ years of professional experience in motion design, with a portfolio that shows mastery across 3D and 2D: not just execution, but conceptual thinking about how motion should move, feel, and unfold over time.
• Advanced proficiency in Cinema 4D, Houdini, Blender, or similar 3D tools, including materials, texturing, lighting, and world-building.
• Advanced proficiency in After Effects or similar 2D motion tools, with deep command of timing, easing, composition, and finishing detail.
• Experience building and documenting