Principal Gameplay Animator

Location: You’ll be based in our Cambridge studio with the option for hybrid working so being within a commutable distance is essential. If this requires you to relocate, we offer visa sponsorship and relocation assistance.

Level: Principal.

About us: Ninja Theory is a five-time BAFTA award winning games company based in Cambridge, UK, and part of Xbox Game Studios. Our diverse and welcoming team values collaboration, quality, and excellence. We strive to maintain an inclusive culture that empowers deep focus, rewards creativity, and supports personal and professional growth.

Our Mission is: To Craft Life-changing Art with Game-changing Tech and we are committed to bringing together the best talent in the industry help us fulfil that promise.

Our Values: Greatness through Excellence, Teamwork & Integrity.

Your Role: As Principal Animator will play a critical role in developing and maintaining high-quality animation pipelines, and continually pushing the boundaries of what is achievable in animation. Working with the Animation Director, you will help lead, mentor, and inspire the animation team to deliver outstanding results.

You'll take performances and turn these into highly believable gameplay assets. You will have the opportunity to take part in the full performance capture process using our inhouse motion capture stage.

Requirements

We believe that skills and experience are not mutually exclusive. For that reason, we encourage you to apply even if you feel you don't meet 100% of the requirements listed below.

Your Skill: You'll have a love for the interactive element of game animation. A strong understanding of body mechanics. An ability to work in a highly collaborative environment, responding to feedback for quick iteration. You will be able to take a performance and manipulate this to create animation sets and sequences for various in-game characters.

Your Experience: You will have extensive experience as an animator in the gaming industry, with a strong portfolio showcasing real world production experience, creating and editing both hand keyed and motion captured assets along with their application within a game engine. You'll have an understanding of both the animation process and awareness of the workflow for implementing gameplay behaviours within a game engine.

Essential:

• Proven excellent leadership and communication skills, with the ability to inspire and motivate a team.
• Mastery of animation tools and software (Maya, MotionBuilder).
• Experience developing and maintaining animation pipeline (from conception to ship).
• Industry experience of working with motion capture data.
• Demonstrable production work within gameplay systems and creating content for them.
• The ability to use reference footage to reconstruct or enhance available data.
• Examples of a realistic style of human animation.
• Demonstrable high quality hand keyed animation experience.

Desirable:

• Proficiency in Unreal Engine, particularly in character and in-world animations.
• Working knowledge of motion capture acquisition tools (e.g. Vicon systems and Shogun live/post).
• Experience with combat and action orientated gameplay.
• A keen eye for cinematography and use camera work to enhance the in-game experience.

Please note, this is a senior position and only candidates with extensive experience in animation will be considered.

Benefits

Our Benefits: In addition to a competitive salary, we offer a comprehensive benefits package, including, but not limited to:

• Hybrid, flexible work model with no fixed working hours.
• 5 weeks holiday plus 1 additional day for each year of service up to a maximum of 33 days per annum, plus bank holidays.
• Enhanced parental leave.
• Bonus scheme.
• Annual wellbeing allowance.
• Private healthcare including medical, dental, and optical cover.
• Mentoring and career development.
• Income protection.
• Life Insurance.

Working from Ninja House, you will benefit from our custom-built studio which offers a luxurious setting with cutting-edge facilities at your fingertips, including full motion capture stage. You’ll also receive complimentary catered lunch from our on-site pub, The Bird or Worm?

Our Process: To ensure a fair and inclusive hiring process which aligns to our studio equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) strategy, we use anonymised screening which automatically obscures personal identifying information from applications, helping to reduce unconscious bias from the start.

Where possible, we kindly ask that you submit anonymised reels/portfolios to support our ED&I commitments.

This is a fantastic opportunity to join a BAFTA Award winning studio in the Xbox Game Studios Group and be part of pushing the boundaries of interactive entertainment.

This advert closes on Tuesday 18th February 2025.