Ninja Theory, a BAFTA award winning game developer in the Xbox Game Studios group, is looking for a Technical Animator to join our development team at our Cambridge studio.

c You will work closely with the animation and programming teams to achieve seamless and dynamic animation integration into engine.

Accountabilities

Create and implement animation systems/character state machines.
Analyse, troubleshoot and solve animation related technical challenges.
Take an active part in discussions, offering advice and suggestions for improving the animation pipeline of the studio.
Implementation of IK systems and procedural animation solutions.
Assist and support animators on effectively implementing animation into the game engine.
Share knowledge and technical developments with the wider animation team and studio.
Research and pioneer game animation technologies.
Requirements

ESSENTIAL:

3+ years Maya experience

Have three or more years industry experience working with animation within Maya and be familiar with the use of scripting within it.
Demonstrable Python knowledge and/or object orientated languages

Proven industry use of python programming language.
Be able to demonstrate how you have used it to solve problems and aid in speeding up or improving your own or others workflow.
An essential part of the role is creative thinking and problem solving. You must show how you have used traits to overcome issues in the past and/or produced innovative work.
Experienced in game animation pipelines

Have a full and demonstrable knowledge of game animation pipeline from source to final in-game product and the challenges and unique aspects of each step of the process.
Used to working with multiple disciplines

Have or are currently working within a development team built from various disciplines.
Be able to describe how the interaction occurs between team members, along with the pros, cons and considerations of working with each area.
Be literate on latest and possible future animation technologies and methodologies

Show an interest in and be able to articulate the theories or ideas behind current cutting-edge game animation technologies and practices.
Be able to show an awareness and some understanding of possible future approaches to improving the quality of game animation.
DESIRABLE:

Industry proven game engine experience

Have three or more years of industry experience within a recognised game engine (i.e. UE4, Unity or in-house solution such as frostbite). Specifically working with visual scripting, animation graphs and character set-ups.
Knowledge of Vicon systems & motion builder

Part of the animation pipeline is motion capture and the tools surrounding it. Whilst the Technical animator role is sort for mainly in-engine purposes there will be times when prior knowledge of the titled software will be valuable.
Demonstrable experience in the creation of in-game character animation

While we are not looking for a keyframe animator to fill this role, experience with animation and good eye for quality are important to the position, as it's industry leading quality animation which are the end goal of the technical animators' work.
Whilst we only ask for industry experience of "a" game-engine, this being in Unreal Engine 4 is advantageous. Due to the whole studio running UE4, prior knowledge of UE4s blueprints, event/animation graphs and its particular pipelines will be helpful to the team.
1+ published titles

Game production can be long and/or fraught with unreleased titles. However, having one or more published games under your belt can show that you are at least familiar with the full scope of development and the challenges and experiences that they offer.
Additional

Other programming languages

We are not looking for a "programmer", but knowledge of other programming/scripting languages shows that your coding skills are transferable, and that you have a good understanding of the language agnostic aspects of coding practices.