Senior Animation R&D Programmer

Company: Rockstar North
Location: San Diego
Posted on: July 1, 2025

Job Description:

Become part of a team working on some of the most rewarding, large-scale creative projects to be found in any entertainment medium - all within an inclusive, highly-motivated environment where you can learn and collaborate with some of the most talented people in the industry. Rockstar is on the lookout for a talented engineer to join our Animation R&D team, with a background in animation retargeting or related techniques. This position will help us develop advanced animation systems for our large open world character-based games. The successful applicant will have strong C++ programming skills, good knowledge of and interest in character animation systems, and passion for realistic, high quality character motion. This is a full-time, in-office position based out of Rockstar’s new state-of-the-art game development studio in Carlsbad, CA. WHAT WE DO • We develop animation technology, from performance capture to a sophisticated runtime engine, for massive open world games. • We are a global team of programmers and researchers who collaborate on pushing the boundaries of character animation on next generation hardware. • We support and work closely with animation, gameplay, physics, tools, graphics, performance capture, and technical art teams across multiple Rockstar studios. RESPONSIBILITIES • Help invent, develop, expand, maintain, and support an extensive runtime animation system, pipeline, and tools. • Develop robust and performant technology to adjust animation to different characters, situations, and environments. • Collaborate and contribute to the research and development of features related to procedural animation, motion adaptation, and character motion synthesis. • Keep up to date with the latest academic and industry breakthroughs, independently research and develop improvements to continuously push our technology forward. QUALIFICATIONS • A degree in Computer Science or a related discipline, or equivalent industry experience. • Proven development of solutions in animation retargeting, motion adaptation, or related subjects. • Experience creating, extending or working directly with an animation system within a game engine. SKILLS • Good communication skills, ability to clearly share complex technical information with other programmers, animators and technical artists. • Strong C/C++ programming skills. • Strong 3D math skills. • Knowledge of character animation technology, particularly retargeting and IK systems. • Familiarity with common optimization and multi-threading techniques. PLUSES Please note that these are desirable skills and are not required to apply for the position. • Industry experience working on AAA character based games, or character based VFX animation. • C# or python programming skills. • Experience developing within a large existing codebase, collaborating, or working independently within a large team. • Experience with motion synthesis or style transfer. • Practical success optimizing or debugging large/complex multithreaded C++ code. • Involvement with pipeline or UI based tools development or support.

Keywords: Rockstar North, La Mesa , Senior Animation R&D Programmer, IT / Software / Systems , San Diego, California