Senior VFX Artist & Animation Generalist

Who We Are:

Gram Games is the studio behind popular titles like 1010!, Six!, Merge Dragons!, and Merge Magic!, with more exciting projects in the pipeline. We are proudly part of the Zynga & Take-Two Interactive family. We do things differently here: we work in small self-managing teams, giving you an incredible amount of ownership, autonomy, and impact. 

At Gram, everyone is expected to have a razor-sharp focus on creating a tangible impact on their team, their work environment, and on the overall company strategy. If you are motivated by autonomy, constant improvement, collaboration, and a sense of belonging, this is the place for you.

The New Games team is looking for a highly skilled Senior VFX & Animation Generalist to join us. This is a hands-on and creative role for someone who can take visual effects and motion design from ideation to final in-game implementation. You will help design, build, and polish the VFX and motion language of the game, working closely with art, design, tech art, engineering, and production.

Crucially, we need someone who can take full ownership of the pipeline that drives the dynamic, deeply satisfying VFX and interactions seen in top-tier, highly polished casual puzzle games. We are looking for a generalist who combines strong artistic judgment with deep hands-on Unity experience.

Responsibilities

• Own, build, and optimize the VFX and animation pipeline, establishing efficient workflows tailored to producing the highly dynamic and rewarding interactions expected in top-tier casual puzzle games.
• Create high-quality VFX and animations from ideation, concept, and visual exploration through to final implementation in Unity.
• Design and implement "juicy" interactions and celebratory effects that make every player interaction feel incredibly tactile and satisfying.
• Bring your own creative ideas to the table to make the puzzle pieces, UI, environments, and effects feel alive and responsive.
• Work hands-on with modern Unity workflows, including the Animation timeline, Particle System, Shader Graph, URP, custom materials, and animation-driven effects.
• Translate concepts, prototypes, gameplay needs, and rough ideas into clear, polished in-engine effects and motion.
• Optimize VFX and animations for mobile, balancing visual ambition with performance, memory, readability, and production constraints.
• Identify visual, technical, and workflow bottlenecks in the pipeline, and propose practical solutions.
• Collaborate with tech art and engineering on shaders, tools, profiling, and runtime performance.

Requirements

• Significant experience (at a Senior, Lead, or Principal level) creating real-time VFX and animations for games, specifically casual puzzle games or highly polished free-to-play titles.
• Proven experience owning, building, or significantly contributing to a VFX and animation pipeline for mobile.
• A strong grasp of fundamental animation principles applied to gameplay elements, UI, and effects.
• Strong hands-on experience making VFX and animations directly in Unity.
• A strong portfolio showing high-quality in-game VFX and motion design from idea to final implementation, highlighting "juicy" and satisfying visual feedback.
• The ability to create assets from early ideation, concept, mood boards, mockups, prototypes, or rough direction and turn them into polished in-engine results.
• A strong understanding of mobile performance constraints and optimization techniques.
• The ability to troubleshoot visual bugs, sorting issues, and performance problems.
• Strong collaboration skills across art, design, technical art, engineering, and production.
• A proactive, organized, and self-driven approach to your work.

What Makes You Successful In This Role

• You are not waiting for tasks to be assigned. You look at the game, understand what it needs, and help raise the bar.
• You are comfortable owning a feature’s VFX and motion from start to finish: shaping the idea, exploring the visual direction, implementing it in Unity, polishing it, and keeping stakeholders informed and aligned.
• You can explain your creative and technical choices clearly, take feedback well, and help the team make better visual decisions.
• Most importantly, you make the game feel better and the player feel profoundly rewarded.

What We Offer You: 

• Highly competitive salary
• Private medical care
• Company bonus scheme
• Awesome onsite chef serving breakfast, lunch, and lots of treats (naughty and nice)
• Life insurance and a favorable pension scheme
• Healthcare cash plan including dental and optical coverage
• Amazing tech to work with and consoles to play and relax with everywhere you look!

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, which means we are committed to creating and celebrating diverse thoughts, cultures, and backgrounds throughout our organization.  Employment with us is based on substantive ability, objective qualifications, and work ethic - not an individual’s race, creed, color, religion, sex or gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry, alienage or citizenship status, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, status as a victim of domestic violence or sex offenses, reproductive health decision, or any other characteristics protected by applicable law.

As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to providing the necessary support and accommodation to qualified individuals with disabilities, health conditions, or impairments (subject to any local qualifying requirements) to ensure their full participation in the job application or interview process. Please contact us at [email protected] to request any accommodations or for support related to your application for an open position.

Please be aware that Zynga does not conduct job interviews or make job offers over third-party messaging apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp, or others.  Zynga also does not engage in any financial exchanges during the recruitment or onboarding process, and will never ask a candidate for their personal or financial information over an app or other unofficial chat channel.  Any attempt to do so may be the result of a scamp or phishing attack, and you should not engage.  Zynga’s  in-house recruitment team will only contact individuals through their official Company email addresses (i.e., via a zynga.com, take2games.com, naturalmotion.com, smallgiantgames.com, themavens.com, gram.gs email domain).