Senior Character Animator and Rigger

Our Mission: 

To capture the hearts and minds of millions of players across the world by creating unforgettable games powered by the best technology.

About Us:

PlayQ is a rapidly growing entertainment and technology company that recognizes quality is king as we deliver unforgettable mobile game experiences to a global audience. Our games engage millions of users daily, surprising them with creativity, beauty and fun!

Our latest hit game, Treasure Party, uniquely combines match-3 puzzle gameplay with a board game adventure, offering a vibrant treasure-hunting experience. Treasure Party is quickly becoming a top title in the match-3 genre with fresh adventures and a fun, rewarding journey perfect for puzzle lovers and adventurers alike.

Our team is driven, playful and deeply committed to excellence and innovation. We work together to craft clever, visually stunning, and memorable experiences. PlayQ’s environment values initiative, collaboration, and individual leadership to ensure that our mission is fulfilled.

Who You Are:

• Proactive Achiever You consistently take the initiative to drive business results, supported by sound reasoning and detailed execution plans.
• Growth Driver You champion company-wide success by relentlessly focusing on achieving results, understanding how your work impacts the entire organization, and pushing to make it 10% better every time. You continuously level yourself up and drive the business forward.
• Solution Seeker Fueled by curiosity, you explore various ways to solve a problem. Every hard problem is an opportunity in disguise. 
• Team Builder You actively foster strong dynamics within and between teams, contributing to our collective success.
• Resilient Leader You consistently approach your work with resilience and a steadfast passion for achievement of our goals despite challenges or setbacks.
• Data-Driven Creator You leverage data to back intuition. Empirical creativity is your go-to. Imagination led, data validated.
  
  

Why you'll want to come to work:

Our Senior Character Animator and Rigger role offers an exciting opportunity to shape the visual identity of Treasure Party through high-quality, character-driven marketing content. In this high-impact position, you’ll build robust, reusable rigging systems and create polished character animations that bring our world and our characters to life across trailers, ads, and promotional campaigns. 

You will own the creation of modular, scalable rigs, reusable motion libraries, and polished, cinematic character animations used across top-of-funnel UA campaigns, promo videos, and storytelling-driven PNP (Puzzle and Peril) creative. You will also support the development of animation systems, facial rigs, action templates, and character-driven sequences that help us test high-impact ads faster. Leveraging deep expertise in Blender and cinematic storytelling pipelines, you’ll help establish the foundation of 3D character animation production at PlayQ—raising quality, efficiency, and creative output across all marketing art production.

This role collaborates closely with the Creative Director, motion designers, 3D generalists, editors, and outsourced partners, ensuring all character assets meet the highest standards of performance and polish. 

Your Responsibilities:

• Rig Development: Develop, design, and maintain modular, scalable rigs for humanoid and non-humanoid characters in Blender.
• Advanced Systems: Build advanced rigging systems including FK/IK switching, squash/stretch setups, constraint-based control systems, space switching, and facial systems using shape keys or blend shapes.
• Character Animation: Animate cinematic sequences, character reactions, narrative shots, emotional beats, and gameplay-inspired moments for Treasure Party’s PNP pipeline and marketing videos (UA, ASO, trailers, and promos).
• Motion Library: Create and manage a reusable library of motion cycles, action templates, expressions, transitions, and animation building blocks for iterative ad testing.
• Creative Collaboration: Work closely with the Creative Director, Lead Artists, and internal partners to maintain consistency, character fidelity, and brand alignment across rigs and animations.
• Technical Troubleshooting: Troubleshoot rigging and animation issues across Blender workflows, ensuring scenes are optimized and assets transfer cleanly between artists.
• Performance Optimization: Optimize rigs for performance, animator usability, and compatibility with internal and external contributors.
• Rig Standards: Maintain clean hierarchies, naming conventions, rig documentation, and scalable systems for long-term creative growth.
• Creative Input: Participate in creative reviews and provide input to improve animation quality, scene layout, lighting, camera work, and production methods.
• Vendor Support: Provide feedback and support for vendor teams, ensuring external rigs and animations meet internal standards.

What you’ll bring to the team:

• Degree: Bachelor's degree in Animation, Computer Graphics, or a related field.
• Professional Experience: 4+ years of experience as a Character Rigger, Character Animator, Technical Animator, or in a similar role, with a portfolio demonstrating your ability to create polished rigs, expressive character animations, and strong technical foundations.
• Creative Aptitude: Strong creative problem-solving skills with the ability to analyze artistic feedback and execute adjustments into polished visual assets that align with project goals.
• Artistic Insight: Comprehensive knowledge of composition, lighting, and color theory, applied through your experience in creating immersive and compelling pre-rendered visuals for games.
• Team Collaboration: Proven ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams, providing guidance and ensuring alignment on the artistic vision, while fostering a positive and collaborative work environment.

Bonus Points:

• Fluent in: Redshift, Arnold, or other rendering tools.
• Experience using: Cloud-based rendering pipelines or render farms. 
• Modeling: Ability to model and refine complementary 3D assets to enhance cinematic scenes, including items like jewels, villain hands, sharks, and other supporting objects.
• Industry experience: Prior experience with Unity export workflows or additional areas such as performance capture, hair systems, prop rigging, FX rigging, or advanced facial blend shape creation.
  
  

At PlayQ, we leverage competitive benchmarking data when setting each role’s base pay range. Individual base salary will be determined based on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, scope of role, business need and geographic location.

If your skillset aligns with the requirements of this role, we will contact you through our official Applicant Tracking System (Greenhouse) or company email address (@playq.net). If you receive communication from a different domain, this communication is not from a legitimate representative of PlayQ.