Senior Technical Animator (contract)

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CD PROJEKT RED is looking for a Senior Technical Animator to join our Technical Animation team working on The Witcher 4 on a 6 month fixed-term employment contract . This is a temporary position covering the absence of an existing team member.

In this role, you will focus on the implementation, development, and stabilization of character animation systems using Unreal Engine 5's Unreal Animation Framework (UAF/AnimNext). You will take ownership of existing technical animation solutions, adapt them to the new framework, and ensure they are robust, performant, and reusable across different character types, including NPCs, humanoid enemies, and monsters.

We are particularly interested in someone with extensive hands-on Unreal Engine experience who can quickly familiarize themselves with existing systems and independently drive technical solutions to completion. Working with rapidly evolving animation technology requires strong problem-solving skills, adaptability, and a methodical approach to overcoming technical challenges. We value curiosity about how animation systems work under the hood, including the ability to explore their underlying implementations and code when needed.

You'll collaborate closely with Animators, Designers, Programmers, and other Technical Animators to help deliver reliable, high-quality animation systems for The Witcher 4.

Daily Responsibilities:

• Implementing, refactoring, and stabilizing character animation systems within Unreal Engine 5's Unreal Animation Framework (UAF/AnimNext), primarily through editor-based graph and node workflows, including the core architecture, locomotion state machines, animation overlays, and physics-driven animation.

• Taking ownership of existing and partially implemented systems, improving their reliability, performance, and reusability across different character types.

• Developing and maintaining animation features for NPCs, humanoid enemies, and monsters, including hit reactions, procedural look-at, inverse kinematics (IK), and ragdoll physics.

• Investigating and resolving complex animation bugs, crashes, visual artifacts, and performance issues in collaboration with Animation Programmers and other Technical Animators.

• Supporting Animators and Designers with animation implementation, content setup, debugging, and tuning to ensure authored animations behave as intended in-game.

• Collaborating with other disciplines to integrate animation systems into gameplay, address production requirements, and improve existing technical solutions.

• Documenting animation systems and workflows, sharing knowledge, and enabling other team members to independently use and maintain the systems.

• At least 5+ years experience in Technical Animation, preferably on AAA or similarly large-scale/complex game projects.

• Extensive hands-on experience with Unreal Engine 5 animation systems, including Animation Blueprints, state machines, Control Rig, and procedural animation.

• Thorough understanding of character animation, including locomotion, animation layering, inverse kinematics, and physics-driven animation.

• Excellent debugging and problem-solving skills, with experience investigating complex runtime issues, animation artifacts, and performance bottlenecks.

• Proven ability to quickly understand and take ownership of unfamiliar technical systems, with a methodical and persistent approach to overcoming technical challenges.

• Solid understanding of animation principles, body mechanics, and the technical requirements of in-game character animation.

• Good working knowledge of Blueprints and the ability to read and navigate C++ code.

• Strong communication skills, with the ability to adapt complex technical topics to different discipline perspectives and explain them clearly through discussion and documentation.

Nice to have

• Hands-on experience with Unreal Engine's AnimNext / Unreal Animation Framework (UAF), particularly modular animation graphs and UAF nodes.

• Experience implementing animation systems for humanoid enemies, creatures, or monsters.

• Experience with Unreal Engine's StateTrees, Physics Assets, Physics Control, and Motion Matching.

• Experience migrating or refactoring existing animation systems to new frameworks.

• Experience working effectively in agile, cross-disciplinary game development teams.