Frontier is an established, market leading independent developer and publisher of videogames for PC and consoles. Founded in 1994, we are based in the world-leading technology cluster and historic city of Cambridge, England.
With a growing team of over 600 talented people, we are passionate about creating innovative genre-leading games and authentic worlds for our communities of players.
We have achieved serial successes across a wide variety of titles including Elite Dangerous, Planet Coaster, Jurassic World Evolution and Planet Zoo.
We are continuing to grow our team to support our existing portfolio and an exciting and ambitious future roadmap, which includes the development of both own-IP titles and licensed-IP titles. Our IP-license partners include Universal (Jurassic World), Formula 1 and Games Workshop (Warhammer).
We are also growing our team to continue the growth of Frontier Foundry, our games label for publishing games developed by carefully selected partner studios.
We have an exciting opportunity for a dedicated animation programmer to work with our highly talented and experienced animation team. Working in our in-house Cobra engine you will create technology that improves how we create and use animations, both in developing tools and processes, and working directly on runtime animation systems specific to each game.
We have a proud history of great character animation, ranging from heavily stylised to realistic behaviours, across both cinematic sequences and real-time motion. Many of our games also feature mechanical animation and physically-driven responses, presenting many novel challenges beyond established skeletal animation techniques.
Fantastic animation will play a huge part in our future success, with games such as Planet Zoo and Jurassic World Evolution leading the way. Your passion for animation and game technology will be pivotal to delivering the quality that we strive for in all our games.
Responsibilities:
- Working with the animation department to deliver high quality authored and procedural animation for each of our games.
- Expanding and improving animation technology within the Cobra engine and supporting tools.
- Optimising the animation development processes and runtime game performance.
About you:
- An eye for animation principles and detail, helping to bring smooth, dynamic and reactive animations to our game.
- Ability to communicate effectively with team members.
- Good analytical and problem solving skills.
- Ability to give and receive constructive feedback in order to strive for continuous improvement.
- Good at managing competing demands for your time.
Qualifications, Skills & Experience:
Essential
- Advanced understanding of C++ and software engineering principles.
- Experience developing animations systems, handling complex locomotion and naturalistic behaviours.
- Experience creating physics driven or procedural animation systems that work alongside authored assets.
Desirable
- Familiarity with game asset pipelines and animations authoring tools.
- Experience with profiling and optimisation for console development.
- Track record of animation programming in released AAA games
What we can offer you
We offer the chance to work with talented and passionate people, developing and publishing sophisticated and enduring games in a creative and collaborative environment. We love what we do, and we work hard to provide outstanding experiences for our player communities. Frontier rewards this passion and determination by sharing in the company’s success and by supporting our teams to keep doing what they love.
Well-being is a big focus at Frontier and we are continually evolving how we can support our staff. We encourage a healthy work/life balance and host a range of well-being activities, initiatives and sessions to support both mental and physical health.
We offer a competitive salary and benefits package, which includes a success-based annual bonus, share option schemes, pension, life assurance, private family healthcare, flexitime working hours, enhanced maternity/paternity package, in-house subsidised catering, support with relocation, a Cycle to Work scheme and free bike servicing, and social events.
We welcome and encourage applications from qualified candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, religion or belief.
