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Animation Programmer - Studio Elevation (Remote)

nDreams Studio Elevation will be bringing the evolution of VR development to core gamers.

This is an all-new studio seeded by the creative talent that brought you the innovative, genre defining award-winning VR title Phantom: Covert Ops.

We are looking for exceptional talent to help pave the way forward with fresh innovation for the next generation of VR hardware and software.

Elevation will re-establish the boundaries of VR. We’re looking for an exceptionally talented Animation Programmer to help us explore, create, and deliver world leading innovation in VR games. Become one of the core team members to help path-find our remote first studio, crafting a new generation of VR development and bringing core VR games to fruition.

As an Animation Programmer, you will be responsible for developing the systems that drive the movement of our characters, creatures, and the world in Unreal to provide a level of immersion and presence that has not yet been seen in VR games. You will be working in collaboration with a diverse team of programmers, designers and artists to create genre-leading titles, driving the discovery, implementation and refinement of intuitive, world class, aspirational VR games.

• Develop and refine the systems, pipelines and set-ups that allow our characters and world to move and come to life, integrating with Unreal animation systems, content creation tools and performance capture.
• Learn, innovate and evangelise VR mechanics and conventions, and help drive industry and VR platform innovation.
• Work within an agile sprint-based ‘fail-faster succeed-sooner' methodology when discovering and exploring new interaction techniques.
• Support other disciplines in creating robust and performant interactive game content.
• Help with the higher-level technical design and project planning for your areas of work.
• Work with your peers to ensure our code is clean, organised, documented and easy to maintain.
• Break down and estimate timescales for your tasks.
• Contribute to nDreams shared studio technology and drive technical innovation.
• Be a positive behavioural and mental role model for the team and studio.

Requirements

Essential Capabilities:

• 2-3 years of professional animation programming experience, with a minimum of one shipped title on a current-generation console, PC, VR headset or mobile.
• A thorough knowledge of C++ including high-performance programming.
• Proven, detailed knowledge of animation programming concepts including animation graphs and state machines, character rigging, complex blending, physics interactions, IK techniques, and how to combine them with art to realise convincing character and world animation inside a modern game engine.
• A detailed knowledge of engine tooling and how in-game animation systems interface into content creation and in-engine tools to enable a multi-discipline effort in authoring interactive content.
• Proven, demonstrable knowledge of game development processes, real-time implementation, optimization, and cross-platform development.
• Demonstrable experience of delivering game features and systems using real-time game engines e.g., Unreal or Unity.
• Strong English communication skills with a focus on positive cross discipline teamwork and an ability to communicate complex technical information to non-technical staff.
• A committed team player, recognizing the importance and value of people within a technology environment.
• Passionate about creating award winning VR titles.

Desired Capabilites:

• Professional experience of VR game development.
• Professional experience developing shipped games in Unreal 4.
• A good understanding of Blueprint and how to interface it to C++
• Prior experience with Perforce and Visual studio
• Experience developing for PlayStation, Xbox, Steam or Oculus
• Comfortable working in an Agile environment, with an ability to responsive positively to change as the project progresses.
• Approachable and light-hearted, with a good sense of fun and a positive mental attitude.

Benefits

This is the opportunity to build upon an already proven, world class foundation of VR expertise, to further shape and mould a new way of working, that continues to deliver and innovate for the next generation of core VR games.

We are a remote first studio, with all the perks that come with it. Work from anywhere to push the boundaries of VR with cutting edge technology and the support of established VR expertise from the wider nDreams group.

Rapidly growing to support a variety of genres, nDreams is one of the world’s leading developers/publishers focused on VR games, creating multiple studios dedicated to making the best games out there.

Salary is competitive and dependent on your experience.

If you think this could be the role for you, we’d love you to get in touch! Drop us your CV via the link or send us an email to enquiries@ndreams.com