Senior Technical Artist – Character Rigging & Technology

EA SPORTS is one of the world's leading sports entertainment brands, with top-selling video game 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 and College Football®, FC® soccer, NHL® hockey, and EA SPORTS UFC®.

EA SPORTS Tech provides specialized technology teams working on modern character motion and deformation, content pipelines and workflows, machine learning, game security, dev ops, and long-lead feature and technology development across EA SPORTS titles. As part of EA SPORTS Tech, the Technical Art Team helps push visual boundaries and experiences for our players. We invest in future technologies, shared tooling, and production workflows, combining creativity and imagination with technical expertise.

Responsibilities

This Senior Technical Artist role focuses on developing character rigging technology, pipelines, tools, and workflows for content creators across EA SPORTS. As part of a central team of Technical Artists, you will partner with artists, engineers, and development teams to build shared and scalable solutions that improve character quality and content production.

• Collaborate with Art Directors, Development Directors, Artists, Technical Artists, and Engineers to deliver high-quality character deformation and animation solutions for EA SPORTS games.

• Develop and improve character rigging pipelines, tools, and workflows to solve production challenges and increase efficiency for content creators.

• Design and implement technical solutions for skeletons, control rigs, skin deformation, secondary motion, and other character rigging and deformation systems.

• Leverage shared technology and workflows to solve character animation and deformation challenges across multiple EA SPORTS titles.

• Support asset integration and optimization while balancing visual quality, runtime performance, and production requirements.

• Investigate, debug, and resolve technical issues across character content, tools, pipelines, and game-engine workflows.

• Evaluate and help introduce new technologies and techniques that improve character production and scalability.

• Partner with technical and creative leadership on new initiatives and contribute to technical direction, documentation, and knowledge sharing.

• Mentor and support other Technical Artists while helping establish best practices across teams.

Your Qualifications

• 6+ years of games, cinematic, or related production experience in Technical Art, Rigging, Character Technology, Animation Technology, or a related discipline.

• A bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience in a related field.

• Strong experience with character rigging and deformation, including complex skeletons, control rigs, skin deformation, and secondary animation systems.

• Strong understanding of human anatomy, animation principles, and how they relate to character deformation.

• Experience developing tools, pipelines, and workflows for artists and other content creators.

• Proficiency in scripting/programming in Python or C#. C++ experience is a bonus.

• In-depth experience with relevant 3D content creation packages such as Maya and Houdini.

• Experience with asset optimization and the performance constraints associated with real-time character systems.

• Experience in investigating, testing, and debugging technical issues across content and technology.

• Effective communication skills and experience collaborating with artists, engineers, technical artists, and leadership.

• Experience working with content-driven game engines such as Frostbite, Unreal, or Unity is desired.

• A willingness to jump into the unknown, solve new problems, and navigate technical challenges and limitations.

• A passion for games!