Animator Jobs in Canada

What we are looking for:

We are looking for a Lead Rigger to own our character rigging pipeline and lead our rigging team. You will work closely with Animation, Art Direction, and Production to define quality standards and technical workflows that enable high-fidelity character deformation and performance across all platforms. Your expertise in Maya rigging and Unreal animation and procedural systems - combined with strong tools development abilities - will establish best practices, mentor junior riggers, and drive the evolution of our characters as the game scales.

Requirements

What we will do together:

• Oversee technical quality of character production: rigging, tools, deformations & simulations in our characters, weapons, and creatures.
• Lead and mentor our Riggers and Character Technical Artists, fostering growth and accountability within the team.
• Establish and drive adoption of best practices across the rigging pipeline in collaboration with Art, Animation, and Production teams.
• Design & develop workflows and tooling that improve iteration speed, quality, and efficiency for riggers and animators.
• Enhance characters in Unreal through procedural and secondary motion systems, including Control Rig, Physics, and other animation systems.
• Find creative solutions to achieve secondary motion and optimization while maintaining high performance across all platforms.
• Support Animation and Art teams with technical rigging expertise, problem-solving, and technical direction.
• Work with outsourcing partners to establish successful workflows for external character rigging and development.

What you will bring:

• Minimum five years of experience in the game industry with 2+ released game projects.
• At least one released Unreal Engine game as a Rigger, Technical Animator, or Technical Artist.
• Proven experience leading and mentoring a rigging or character technical team.
• Expert-level rigging skills in Maya, mGear experience a plus.
• Strong pipeline and tools development experience - designing, architecting, and maintaining rigging toolsets that improve team efficiency.
• Highly proficient with Python or similar scripting languages for tools development in Maya and Unreal.
• Highly experienced with Unreal’s secondary motion systems, including Rigid Bodies, Cloth, Control Rig, and Anim Dynamics.
• Excitement for dynamic, optimized characters and continuous process improvement.

Benefits

Interested… a bit about Escape Velocity:

Escape Velocity is a team of passionate, talented developers working at a studio that offers excellent benefits, on what we believe is a once-in-a-career project with a committed publisher. But that doesn’t necessarily make us unique. What does make us special? We value the time, energy, and talent of our players and our colleagues. We want every hour spent developing and playing our games to be an incredibly rewarding and worthwhile use of your time. To that end, we are ‘Fully Remote’ and support team members nearly anywhere in the world. We prioritize honesty, even when that means sharing bad news. We strive to give everyone autonomy so they can determine how best to work and play, and we care more about what you bring to the game and studio than how many hours you’re clocking. We’re dedicated to building a culture of play, which not only makes us better game makers, but also strengthens the bonds between us all. We believe in constant improvement across all areas – from the game itself to our production design – and are constantly re-evaluating how we spend our time to ensure that we’re not wasting yours and we’re all always working on the most important things.

A few benefits you can expect from us:

• A generous PTO allowance
• Summer and Winter holidays studio closure (separate to PTO allowance)
• Private Medical & Dental Healthcare
• Private Mental Health scheme
• A generous annual Health & Wellbeing allowance
• Discretionary Studio Bonus
• Top range tech for your home set up
• Other benefits based on your region

How