Associate Technical Animator / Rigger at Virtuos in France

Associate Technical Animator / Rigger

Location: France

We are looking for an experienced and versatile Associate Technical Animator / Rigger with at least 5 years of professional game development experience.

As an Associate, you will work in close partnership with the Lead Technical Animator, helping coordinate the team's day-to-day activities while remaining hands-on in both rigging and technical animation. You will contribute to task planning, work distribution, technical reviews, and production follow-up, helping ensure the team delivers high-quality results on schedule.

Alongside these leadership responsibilities, you will design and maintain production-ready rigs, implement animation systems in the engine, and collaborate closely with Animators, Technical Artists, and Engineers to deliver performing and scalable animation solutions.

1. Team Support & Coordination

• Partner with the Lead Technical Animator to support the day-to-day organization and execution of the team's work.

• Assist with task planning, prioritization, and work distribution across rigging and technical animation disciplines.

• Help monitor progress, identify production risks, and proactively communicate issues and solutions.

• Support the Lead in maintaining technical quality, consistency, and best practices across the team.

• Review work, provide constructive feedback, and mentor junior and intermediate team members.

• Act as a point of contact for the team when delegated by the Lead Technical Animator.

1. Technical Animation & Rigging

• Design, develop, and maintain high-quality rigs for characters, creatures, and props.

• Implement and maintain animation systems in Unreal Engine, including Animation Blueprints, State Machines, Blend Spaces, Control Rig, and related animation logic.

• Collaborate closely with Animators, Technical Artists, Gameplay Programmers, and Engineers to develop scalable, production-ready animation solutions.

• Develop, maintain, and improve tools and scripts to enhance rigging and technical animation workflows.

• Troubleshoot and resolve rigging, deformation, animation, and integration issues throughout production.

• Optimize animation systems to meet runtime performance and memory requirements.

• Contribute to pipeline improvements, technical innovation, and the adoption of industry best practices.

• Minimum 5 years of professional experience in Technical Animation and Rigging within the video game industry.

• Previous experience supporting a Lead or coordinating technical work within a team.

• Strong expertise in creating production-quality rigs for characters, creatures, and props using Autodesk Maya or equivalent DCC software.

• Hands-on experience implementing animation systems in Unreal Engine, including Animation Blueprints, State Machines, Blend Spaces, and Control Rig.

• Practical experience with C++ development in Unreal Engine, with the ability to debug, extend, and collaborate on animation-related gameplay systems.

• Proficiency in Python, MEL, or equivalent scripting languages for pipeline automation and tool development.

• Solid understanding of animation principles, character deformation, and real-time animation workflows.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to debug complex technical issues.

• Excellent organizational, communication, and collaboration skills.

• Ability to balance hands-on production work with team coordination responsibilities.

• Professional proficiency in English.

Nice to Have

• Experience leading small feature teams or acting as a technical point of contact.

• Experience with facial rigging and facial animation pipelines.

• Experience with motion capture processing, cleanup, and integration.

• Familiarity with Motion Matching, procedural animation systems, or advanced Unreal Engine animation features.

• Experience shipping one or more AAA or large-scale game productions.