Senior Technical Animator - Character Rigging (Apex Legends)

About the Role

Respawn Entertainment, part of Electronic Arts, is hiring a Senior Technical Animator focused on character rigging R&D to support the Apex Legends animation and character teams. This role sits at the intersection of technical art, animation, and character development, with a strong emphasis on building tools, improving workflows, and helping teams deliver high-quality in-game character assets and animation systems.

Respawn was founded in 2010 by the original creators of the Call of Duty franchise with a studio philosophy centered on creative freedom and building exceptional games. Its portfolio includes Apex Legends, Titanfall, Titanfall 2, Star Wars™ Jedi: Fallen Order, Star Wars™ Jedi: Survivor, and Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond.

What You’ll Do

• Report to the Lead Technical Animator and take ownership of character rig development, workflow support, and scripting tools.
• Explore and build solutions for new and evolving character production workflows within your area.
• Collaborate with contributors and department leads to improve DCC and runtime tools for animation and character pipelines in Maya and Source Engine.
• Work with technical, animation, and character art partners to create solutions that are stable, efficient, and able to scale.
• Assist art and animation teams with troubleshooting, especially for Maya rigs, tools, and engine-side asset integration.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience in the game industry on the technical art or animation side.
• Hands-on experience building and skinning characters, mechanical rigs, and creature setups in Maya.
• Experience with live-service production workflows, including personalization, skins, and related character content.
• Working knowledge of real-time deformation and physics systems in a game engine.
• Ability to create artist- and animator-facing tools using Python and PySide.
• Experience working with both keyframe animation and motion capture data.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to understand teammate needs and clearly explain your own.
• Comfort giving and receiving feedback in a professional, constructive, and timely way.
• Experience contributing to a FACS-based facial animation pipeline is an advantage.
• Experience shipping one or more titles, preferably in the FPS genre.

Compensation & Benefits

For British Columbia, the expected pay range is CAD 122,300 to 170,700 depending on location such as Vancouver or Victoria. For California, the range is USD 143,800 to 217,200 depending on location such as Los Angeles or San Francisco.

Compensation is only one part of the overall package. Benefits may include paid time off, sick time, company holidays, parental leave support, medical, dental, and vision coverage, life and disability insurance, retirement benefits, and, for some roles, bonus and equity eligibility. Canadian benefits may also include vacation, paid sick time, top-up to EI/QPIP for new child leave, extended health coverage, and a retirement plan.

Additional Information

Electronic Arts emphasizes adaptability, resilience, creativity, curiosity, and career growth. The company supports a holistic wellbeing approach covering physical, emotional, financial, career, and community needs. EA is an equal opportunity employer and provides workplace accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities as required by law. Employment decisions are made without discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics, and qualified applicants with criminal records may also be considered where applicable.