Gameplay Animation Engineer (Staff, Principal)

Role Summary

Gym Class is the top rated game on the Meta Quest platform (58K ratings, 4.9 stars). Millions of players globally have downloaded GC to make friends, explore social worlds, and compete to become a star. Our community formed around social basketball, and is now rapidly expanding interests and gameplay - including football, baseball, and much more.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

As the first Gameplay Animation Engineer hire at Gym Class, you’ll drive our animation gameplay and systems roadmap, and balance shipping product with applied research at the intersection of character motion AI, spatial computing, and social gaming. Your work is pivotal towards facilitating infinite, personalized social experiences for the Gym Class community. Your scope will first focus on:

• Animation Systems: Develop character animation systems & pipelines optimized for Virtual Reality and Mobile experiences, focusing on high quality and realistic movement, gestures, expressions, and actions. Use your strong grasp of traditional methods in Unity (state machine, IK systems, blend trees), and push the bounds with applied research.
• Motion Data: Work with a wide set of motion data, ranging from animation libraries to collected or extracted upper-body and full-body datasets.
• Leadership: Once you begin shipping product, you'll have the opportunity to build your own squad and accelerate your roadmap. Your scope may also expand to a wider set of problems across our company. You’ll work directly with our co-founders.

In this role, you'll collaborate with our co-founders, gameplay & ai engineers, artists, and designers. You'll ship great work directly to a large and eager community, while also building the foundations for a fast-moving Animation Engineering squad.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Deep knowledge of C# and Unity: Demonstrated proficiency in C# programming, showcasing your ability to implement and optimize animation systems in Unity. Likely Staff+ role at consumer game shipping to millions of players.
• Animation Engineering Skills: Track record of shipping animation gameplay systems & pipelines to large, consumer audiences on mobile (or other resource constrained environments). Experience working in Maya, character rigging and IK/FK systems, blendshape animations, state machines, animation controllers, solid understanding of character anatomy, movement, and acting principles in a VR context. Strong problem-solving skills and meticulous attention to detail, dedicated to delivering top-tier animations and interactivity.
• Optimization Skills: Strong skills in game optimization to ensure the highest performance, with an additional advantage if you have experience in mobile game development in Unity. Strong knowledge of performance trade-offs and optimization for mobile (GPU and CPU impacts).
• Team Collaboration & Problem-Solving Abilities: Effective communication across various disciplines and creative problem-solving are essential. As the lead Animation Engineer, you'll be tasked with building and leading a squad as the roadmap scales, making collaboration and leadership skills crucial to success.
• Interests: Experience or interest in AI based animation systems and applied research a big plus. Passion for VR gaming and a keen interest in pushing the boundaries of character animation and programming within the VR space

PAY AND BENEFITS

Salary ranges may be inclusive of several career levels and will be narrowed during the interview process based on a number of factors, including the candidate’s experience, qualifications, and location. Additional benefits for this role include: equity; and medical, dental, and vision benefits; and 401k retirement plan with matching.