Role: Animation Director
Note: This is a hybrid (3x per week) role located in Orlando, FL (this role may qualify for relocation assistance).
EA SPORTS is one of the leading sports entertainment brands in the world, with top-selling
videogame franchises, award-winning interactive technology, fan programs, and cross-
platform digital experiences. EA SPORTS creates connected experiences that ignite the
emotion of sport through industry-leading sports video games, including Madden NFL
football, EA SPORTS College Football, EA SPORTS FC, EA SPORTS NHL hockey, and EA SPORTS UFC.
We are seeking an experienced and visionary Animation Director to lead our animation
team and drive the animation direction for our games. In this role, you will be responsible
for setting the animation vision, defining the style and quality bar, and ensuring the
seamless integration of animation into compelling player experiences.
Your Responsibilities:
● Define and deliver the vision and quality bar for all motion in the game.
● Drive animation quality while balancing performance, continuity, technical,
scheduling, and budgetary requirements.
● Hire, mentor, guide, and manage the work of our exceptional animation team.
● Provide regular feedback and direction to the animation team.
● Drive the evolution of the animation pipeline and establish efficient animation
workflows and procedures.
You will collaborate with:
● Creative and Art leadership to define the overall animation direction, style,
quality, and execution.
● Design and Engineering to ensure motion meets the gameplay,
responsiveness, and player-experience requirements of the game.
● Technical animators, character riggers, and modelers to ensure our
characters maintain a consistently high quality bar in motion.
● Graphics engineers to ensure characters are grounded in the world through
lighting, shadows, visual effects, weather, and environmental interaction.
● Physics engineers to ensure characters operate within the physical rules you
define and interact with other characters and the environment in believable
ways.
Your Qualifications:
● A great eye for style, performance, and quality, combined with strong technical
understanding.
● Passion for innovation and continuous improvement.
● 5+ years as a senior animation contributor or leader, including experience directing
animation on high-quality AAA games.
● Strong leadership, people-management, communication, and mentoring skills.
● Ability to inspire and lead a team to deliver high-quality work on time and within
budget.
● Skill in guiding a team to balance creative ambition with technical and production
requirements.
● Experience and confidence directing actors and athletes for motion capture.
● A collaborative, motivated, and accountable approach to team leadership.
● Strong knowledge of current animation practices, technologies, and industry trends.
● Experience directing or working with real-time animation systems, including blend
trees, state machines, motion-matching systems, or comparable runtime solutions,
in engines such as Unreal Engine, Unity, Frostbite, or other proprietary technology.
Beneficial Qualifications:
● Experience evaluating and applying emerging animation technologies, including
machine learning, procedural animation, performance capture, and automation
tools, to improve quality or production efficiency.
● A passion for sports and strong knowledge of American football.
● Technical fluency with scripting, tools, or engine workflows that supports effective
collaboration with engineers and technical teams