About the role
Company Overview
Founded in 2023, Small Axe Studios is 2K’s newest stand-alone studio, built to push the boundaries of game development and bring 2K’s next groundbreaking sports franchise to life. Headquartered in Burnaby, the team consists of visionaries, builders, and passionate gamers focused on creative collaboration, technical excellence, and bold ideas. The studio is crafting a player-first experience from the ground up for a brand-new IP.
Role Overview
The Senior Technical Animator at 2K Sports Lab bridges the gap between engineering, animation, and art teams through technical precision, anatomical insight, and creative problem-solving. This role requires artistic versatility to handle technical animation challenges, shape the character rigging pipeline, build high-quality body and facial rigs with clean skinning, and ensure seamless integration into Unreal Engine.
Responsibilities
- Design, create, maintain and optimize character body and facial rigs for gameplay and cinematic assets.
- Define and implement asset binding and skinning pipeline to support the Character Art and Animation teams.
- Collaborate with animators to ensure rigs meet animation quality and usability needs.
- Build and maintain body and facial rigging pipelines and tools, including FACS-based facial systems.
- Build and maintain animation mocap processing pipelines and animation databases.
- Work with engineering to ensure character assets function efficiently in runtime environments.
Mandatory Qualifications
- 6+ years of experience as a Technical Animator or Rigging TD, in games or related industries.
- Strong knowledge of rigging and skinning for both body and facial systems.
- Solid understanding of human anatomy, deformation, and animation principles.
- Proficiency in Maya and MotionBuilder.
- Strong scripting ability in Python (C++ is a plus).
- Proven experience integrating character rigs into Unreal Engine.
- Familiarity with Control Rig, Metahuman, and Unreal animation systems.
Beneficial Qualifications
- Experience in character simulation (cloth, muscle, hair).
- Familiarity with motion capture pipelines.
- Experience developing rigging tools or facial solvers for real-time performance.
- Experience with Cloth rigging and simulation.
Working Conditions
- Location: Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
- Requirement: Local to the Burnaby area or open to relocation; willing to come into the office 2 days a week.
Compensation and Benefits
- Base Pay Range: CAD $99,800 to CAD $147,680 per year.
- Factors: Base pay is based on market location and varies depending on individualized factors such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and other objective business considerations.
- Total Compensation: May include a bonus and/or equity awards, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits. Temporary or intern roles are not eligible for all payments or benefits.
- Accommodations: The company is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable accommodation to qualified individuals with disabilities for the application or interview process and essential job functions.