Meta Reality Lab’s mission is to help people feel connected, anytime, anywhere. Expressive, interactive characters are a critical foundation to this mission. As Principal Animator on the team, you’ll be working with a talented group of industry professionals leading the way in this emergent and creative space. If you’re excited about forging into new territory and pushing the boundaries of real-time character animation across a variety of products, this may be the place for you. This work is just beginning, an animator jumping in at this point will shape the future of a new form of self-expression and styles of 3d character art and animation net yet defined Principal Animator Responsibilities:

• Champion the art and craft of real-time character animation in the team
• Work with the Art Director, Animation Leadership and the immediate creative team to define and set quality standards
• Create believable and visually appealing character animations, poses and facial expressions that delight our audience
• Deliver production content to time and to specification, including key movement sets and the motion tree design to work with them.
• Build strong collaborative working relationships with all members of the animation and technical art teams, the wider team, the studio, and wider Meta organization.
• Using your end to end understanding of animation pipelines to proactively work with a multidisciplinary team (Engineers, Tech and Character Artists) to specify and research, then prototype and develop, flexible and performant animation systems for the future.
• Work with multiple vendors, collaborating and giving feedback on technical and artistic solutions

Minimum Qualifications:

• Practical experience and understanding of setting animation quality, implementing real-time animation pipelines, and optimizing them
• Demonstrate a strong knowledge of what natural human movement and anatomy is, so that all animations are informed by this knowledge to give appealing visual results
• Highly proficient in relevant software packages, e.g. Maya and Commercial game engines
• Showreel that demonstrate excellent animation skills (the art) and the delivery of this content to run-time systems (the craft)
• Strong teamwork and communication skills, ability to receive and offer feedback, ability to provide creative direction

Preferred Qualifications:

• Familiarity with design and optimization of animation motion trees (e.g. Unreal Animation Blueprints and State machines)
• Familiarity working with motion capture pipelines and equipment (e.g. Motionbuilder and Xsens)
• Familiarity with animation dynamics, e.g. set up of physics assets and ragdoll
• Experience in working with outsourcers / external contributors
• Experience with facial animation combined with facial customization
• Experience specifying and supporting animation tools development

About Meta: Meta builds technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world. Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology. People who choose to build their careers by building with us at Meta help shape a future that will take us beyond what digital connection makes possible today—beyond the constraints of screens, the limits of distance, and even the rules of physics.