Skild AI
Senior Robot Animator
$100K–$300K
San Mateo, CA +1 · Senior · Full-time · Posted Aug 25, 2026
- Location
- San Mateo, CA
San Mateo, California, United States - Experience
- 5+ years animating professionally in film/VFX, games, or robotics, or equivalent senior-level experience.
About the job
Creates and refines robot animations for simulation and physical machines, collaborating with robotics, simulation, and hardware teams.
What you'll do
- Author robot motion in Maya or Blender using keyframe, procedural, and capture-based techniques; edit and retarget captured motion.
- Collaborate with robotics engineers to transfer motion from digital content creation to real hardware, and deliver rendered work and machine-performed sequences.
- Build motion libraries and support hardware previz and range-of-motion studies.
What they ask for
- Expert keyframe animation and a strong sense of weight, timing, and body mechanics.
- Rigging experience with mechanical or articulated characters, including constraints, IK/FK, joint limits, and mechanism-accurate setups.
- Ability to clean, edit, and retarget motion capture onto non-human skeletons.
- Demo reel required.
Nice to have
- Background working with humanoid or robotic characters in simulation or the real world.
- Familiarity with controls, rigid-body dynamics, or simulation.
Pay
$100,000 — $300,000 USD base salary
Tools
Maya, Blender
AI focus
Build motion libraries and retargeting to support simulation and machine learning work.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative