Technical Animator

About Big Shot Pictures Big Shot Pictures is a next generation animation company founded by Brian Robbins that produces the franchises of tomorrow. With a distinctive digital-first approach, the company builds global animation franchises across all platforms – from digital to theatrical, gaming to streaming, and consumer products to experiences. Big Shot has a first-look theatrical distribution deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment and is backed by strategic investment from Greycroft, Sony Pictures, MarcyPen Capital Partners, ValueAct Capital, and CAA.About the Role We are seeking a Technical Animator to support and scale our Unreal Engine–first, real-time character and animation pipeline. This role operates at the intersection of animation, rigging, tools development, and engine integration, and is critical to ensuring characters and animation assets move efficiently from DCC tools into Unreal Engine. The ideal candidate is highly technical, production-minded, and passionate about building reliable, scalable animation systems.This role will support the development of stylized, high-quality content for kids and family audiences, requiring a strong sense of performance, appeal, and character storytelling.ResponsibilitiesBuild, skin, and maintain character rigs in Unreal Engine or DCC packages such as BlenderImplement, maintain, and iterate on rigs using Unreal Engine Control RigSupport and evolve the MetaHuman pipeline, including setup, iteration, and engine integrationOrganize, manage, and optimize large sets of animation and character data across multiple projectsManage assets for efficient sharing, versioning, and real-time performance optimizationCollaborate closely with animators, character artists, and technical artists to solve pipeline and production challengesEnsure clean, reliable integration of skeletal meshes and animation data in Unreal EngineRequired QualificationsProven experience skinning and rigging characters in a DCC packageHands-on experience with Unreal Engine Control Rig in productionStrong understanding of asset organization, data management, and pipeline best practicesExperience managing and optimizing animation assets for real-time productionFamiliarity with Unreal Engine MetaHuman workflowsExperience building animation or rigging tools in DCC packagesAbility to write and maintain tools using PythonPlusesExperience working with motion capture systems and performance capture dataExperience exporting, troubleshooting, and debugging skeletal and animation data in real-time enginesFamiliarity with Unreal Engine BlueprintsExperience supporting across a wide range of styles, with an emphasis on stylized and appealing performance for kids and family contentInterest in emerging tools and workflows that improve efficiency, iteration, and scalability