Lead Animator

Job title: Lead Animator

About the Role As Bonfire's Lead Animator, you will be accountable for how our game moves and how the animation discipline grows. You’ll set vision, mentor artists, evolve pipelines, and uphold a high quality bar for a competitive, combat-driven multiplayer experience in Arkheron.

What You'll Do

• Inspire and guide the animation discipline, setting the creative vision and quality bar for characters and combat in a competitive multiplayer game.
• Lead and mentor a lean animation team, fostering autonomy, accountability, and growth through clear expectations, constructive feedback, and thoughtful development.
• Balance leadership with hands-on creation, contributing directly to gameplay animation while setting standards and pushing ideas forward independently.
• Partner with cross-discipline leads (design, engineering, art, production) to align animation with gameplay systems, technical realities, and the overall player experience.
• Own combat feel and moment-to-moment gameplay expression, ensuring characters are readable, responsive, expressive, and impactful.
• Drive production clarity and execution, prioritizing animation goals, pipelines, and team focus while balancing fidelity, performance, and schedule.
• Evolve animation systems and workflows, including thoughtful use of motion capture, keyframe techniques, and external partnerships.
• Guide and review external animation partners, maintaining a high craft bar across both internal and outsourced work.
• Contribute to studio-wide hiring, onboarding, and team-building efforts to grow and strengthen the animation discipline.
• Foster accountability and self-sufficiency, empowering the team to solve problems proactively while maintaining strong collaboration.

What We're Looking For

• Proven experience creating high-quality, in-game animations, ideally across multiple shipped titles.
• Energized by competitive multiplayer combat and understand the critical role animation plays in readability, feel, and fairness.
• Strong understanding of combat systems and how animation drives responsiveness and player satisfaction.
• Experience developing animation systems, ideally in new or evolving engines.
• Comfortable owning features end-to-end, from early exploration through final implementation.
• Highly skilled at conveying character through gameplay animation, not just cinematics.
• Ability to push for animation excellence while always prioritizing gameplay quality.
• Thrives in tight-knit, highly collaborative teams and communicates clearly across disciplines.
• Self-directed, adaptable, and able to focus on what matters most for the game right now.
• Belief in building great games with great teams that put people first, with trust, openness, humility, curiosity, and a growth mindset.
• Desire to make a meaningful impact on a new IP and shape both the role and the studio as we grow.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: not disclosed in the posting.
• Benefits: not specified in the posting.