{"id":3756277,"url":"https://alion.io/job/frontier-developments-lead-animator","title":"Lead Animator","company":{"id":51610,"name":"Frontier Developments","domain":"frontier.co.uk","url":"https://alion.io/company/frontier-developments","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Lever","truth_index":null},"role":"Hospitality","role_family":"Hospitality","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Cambridge, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Python","optional":true},{"name":"Unity","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-04T14:39:02Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-04","last_verified_at":"2026-11-06T21:00:54Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":2,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":2},"description":"WHAT’S THE ROLE?\nAre you passionate about crafting compelling character and creature animation that elevates gameplay? At Frontier, animation is at the heart of our storytelling. We’re looking for an experienced Lead Animator to helm one of our Animation teams on an exciting new project.\nWHAT YOU'LL BE DOING\nOwn animation progress, delivery, and quality on the assigned project.\n\nLead and organise a large animation team, delegating meaningful ownership, balancing workload, and maintaining appropriate oversight.\n\nSet a clear animation vision, quality bar and delivery plan, with defined priorities, responsibilities and dependencies.\n\nWork closely with Production on scope, estimates, schedules, capacity, milestones and delivery risks.\n\nCoordinate with Project Direction and discipline leadership to align Animation with wider project goals and dependencies.\n\nIdentify and communicate risks, assumptions and mitigations to Project Direction and studio senior management.\n\nManage team performance and delivery expectations through timely, direct, and constructive feedback.\n\nGuide character and creature animation practice, engine implementation and creative standards across internal and external contributors.\n\nPartner with Technical Animation, Animation Code and Rigging to improve tools, pipelines and workflows.\n\nManage animation outsource relationships, briefs, feedback, quality expectations and delivery.\n\nSupport recruitment, onboarding, and capability planning.\n\nFacilitate documentation and reinforcement of workflows, technical decisions, and best practice.\n\nWHAT YOU'LL BRING\nSignificant animation experience in the games industry, including leading large teams on complex projects.\n\nStrong character and/or creature animation craft, visual judgement, implementation knowledge and understanding of animation pipelines.\n\nProven experience planning team delivery, tracking progress, balancing capacity and recovering work that is off track.\n\nEffective people leadership, including delegation, objective setting, coaching, development and performance management.\n\nStrong partnership with Production and experience coordinating with Project Direction, discipline leaders and external partners.\n\nSound judgement and decision-making, including the ability to maintain progress through uncertainty and align stakeholders where needed.\n\nExpert knowledge of anatomy, movement and performance, with the ability to give clear, actionable direction.\n\nStrong knowledge of animation engine tools and systems such as blend trees, state machines and retargeting systems.\n\nExperience collaborating with Animation/Gameplay Code, Technical Animation and Rigging on pipeline, process and tool improvements.\n\nExcellent communication and influencing skills, including constructive challenge, difficult feedback and clear escalation.\n\nBONUS IF YOU HAVE\nExperience on AAA or large multidisciplinary productions and with engines such as Unreal or Unity.\n\nExperience shaping animation strategy, team structures, hiring plans and long-term capability.\n\nKnowledge of cinematics, camera theory, motion capture, and motion capture clean-up.\n\nExperience creating Python or MEL tools and maintaining internal documentation.\n\nExperience leading distributed teams or mixed internal and external development groups.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3297,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["PC Games","Game Development"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-04T17:04:07Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"GB","licensed_sponsor":true,"adverts_offering_sponsorship_24m":0,"sanctioned_now":false,"evidence":"Licensed UK visa sponsor (Senior or Specialist Worker, Skilled Worker)","filings_12m":null,"filings_prev_12m":null,"green_card_filings_12m":null,"median_offered_wage_usd":null,"route":"Global Business Mobility: Senior or Specialist Worker; 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