Lead Animation Engineer

Welcome to Striking Distance Studios!

Driven by people. Inspired by challenges. Relentless to deliver creative excellence.

At the intersection of art, design and technology lies Striking Distance Studios. Led by Dead Space and Call of Duty franchise veteran Glen Schofield, we are a AAA development studio within the San Ramon Hills of the San Francisco Bay Area. With the release of our first title, The Callisto Protocol, we are excited to continue to grow our team.

Here at Striking Distance Studios it is amazing people, an immersive experience and a passion for excellence that drives us each day. We are looking for people who push themselves creatively and learn with every new challenge. We give you the setting and the opportunity to do work you are proud of. We’re looking for the best to come join us and become part of a world-class team.

To us excellence is not a skill, but an attitude!

What we are looking for:

Striking Distance Studios is looking for a Lead Animation Engineer that has a passion for working with animators to bring characters to life. You think extensively about how to utilize the latest deep learning technologies in pursuit of next-level procedural animation.

Responsibilities:

• Build optimized, sustainable and maintainable technologies to help solve game driven animation problems
• Implement tools and pipelines integrating with game systems for the rapid creation and iteration of animation content
• Work closely with designers, artists, and other engineers to ensure a great player experience
• Work with the animators and technical artists to support their needs and ensure a powerful and easy workflow
• Architect and implement data driven procedural animation systems.
• Manage mocap data collection processes for deep learning projects.
• Foster a culture of open, honest, and respectful communication across all disciplines

Qualifications:

• Knowledge of all things Animation: inverse kinematics, forward kinematics, rigging, collision dynamics, motion capture
• Experience with low-level animation constructs: compression, blending, and posing
• Strong mathematics skills including proficiency using trigonometry and linear algebra
• Fluent in C/C++
• Familiarity with the following:
• Task planning algorithms. (HTN, POP, MDP, etc.) and Intelligent agent frameworks. (BDI, GOAL, etc.)
• Unreal Engine
• Existing procedural animation packages (IKinema, Unity Kinematica, etc.)
• Existing tensor graph packages. (Tensorflow, Caffe, etc.)
• 5+ years of games industry experience and preferably 2 years or more in a similar role.
• A bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or relevant work experience

In California, the expected salary range for this position is $170,000-$215,000. The listed expected salary range represents a good faith estimate and the actual pay may depend on a variety of job-related factors that can include experience, education, skills, and location.

Due to recent scams, our recruiters will only reach out to you via @sds.com, @krafton.com or @pubg.com. If you received an email and are unsure you can always email recruiting@sds.com .