Technical Artist – Character Rigging

Location: Canada – Remote
Employment Type: Full-time, 6-month fixed-term employment contract
Salary: $75,000 CAD annualized
Company: XpertVR
About XpertVR
XpertVR develops immersive VR and XR training simulations for emergency response, public safety, industrial safety, and other high-risk environments.
We are looking for a Technical Artist – Character Rigging to support a new generation of dynamic characters and environments within our VR training platform.
The Role
You will bridge the gap between our art and programming teams, with a particular focus on character rigs, animation systems, avatar development, runtime performance, and Unity integration.
What You’ll Work On
Creating and maintaining production-ready character rigs
Rigging and skinning humanoid avatars
Developing facial-animation and lip-sync workflows
Supporting viseme, phoneme, blend-shape, and facial-rig systems
Creating and refining IK and animation-rigging systems
Integrating characters and animation systems into Unity
Supporting scenario-driven character behaviour states
Optimizing characters, meshes, animation, materials, and assets for real-time VR
Establishing asset and performance budgets
Troubleshooting art-to-engine pipeline issues
Supporting environmental, hazard, shader, and VFX systems is a nice to have
The project requires modifying humanoid avatars, environmental interaction systems, and investigation of runtime lip and facial movement synchronized with generated communication.
What We’re Looking For
Strong character rigging and skinning experience
Experience preparing characters for Unity or another real-time engine
Strong understanding of skeletal animation, deformation, IK, and animation blending
Experience with Blender or similar tools
Adapting animations for existing character rigs
Understanding of real-time rendering and asset optimization
Ability to troubleshoot technical art and animation pipeline issues
Experience collaborating with both artists and programmers
Nice to have:
Facial rigging and blend-shape experience
Viseme, phoneme, or lip-sync systems experience
Unity Animation Rigging or similar systems
Python or C# scripting
Meta Quest, PICO, or standalone VR optimization
Shader, VFX, particle, fire, or smoke experience
What Success Looks Like in 6 Months
By the end of the contract, you will have helped deliver:
A reusable and production-ready character rigging pipeline for XpertVR’s first-responder and occupant avatars
Character rigs capable of supporting scenario-driven animation and behaviour
A working facial-animation and lip-sync prototype connected to generated communication
Optimized character assets capable of running within the project’s VR performance targets
Repeatable technical-art workflows that can be reused for future XpertVR scenarios and characters
Employment Requirements
Applicants must:
Reside in Canada
Be legally eligible to work in Canada for the full contract period
Be available for full-time employment during the six-month project

Work arrangement
Yes