Senior Cinematic Animator (contract)

CD PROJEKT RED is on the lookout for a skilled and passionate Senior Cinematic Animator to join our team for a 2 year fixed-term contract and work on Open World Creatures as we expand the boundaries of immersive storytelling through gameplay. This is a unique opportunity to help shape how the living, breathing world of our games feels, moves, and connects with the player, beyond the confines of traditional cutscenes.
As a Cinematic Open World Creature Animator, you’ll be crafting animations that bring dynamic, non-player characters (NPCs), animals, creatures, and environmental interactions to life. Your work will support the creation of world routines, behaviors, ambient scenes, and contextual events, always with narrative intent and gameplay responsiveness in mind. Whether it’s a an animal or monster with its routine, reacting to player presence, or just engaging in their daily lives, your animation will help give the world soul and believability.
You’ll work closely with various design teams and cross-disciplinary departments, from Open World and Gameplay design to Technical Animation and Asset Team, in a highly communicative and collaborative environment. Together, we aim to create a world that feels systemic, responsive, and rich with narrative detail. If you’re driven by systemic storytelling, emergent animation challenges, and creating moments that feel meaningful even outside of dialogue or cinematics, this is the role for you.
Daily responsibilities
Being a game developer first — thinking about how your animations will look, feel, and respond within dynamic gameplay and systemic world scenarios.
Taking ownership of animation content for a specific creature in the game world, and collaborating in a multi-disciplinary team to deliver immersive open world experiences.
Delivering work that aligns with the overall artistic and narrative direction of the project — even outside traditional cinematics.
Creating final, high-quality animation assets for creature routines, behaviors, environmental interactions and narrative-driven systemic events — using both motion capture and keyframe techniques.
Collaborating on a daily basis with the Cinematic Animation Lead and other departments (e.g. Gameplay, Open World Design, Narrative…) to ensure animations serve gameplay and worldbuilding goals.
Estimating time required to complete your tasks and delivering on schedule with attention to implementation details and requirements.
Rapidly prototyping and iterating animations to test ideas and bring systemic interactions to life.
Offering creative and technical solutions to everyday animation challenges, especially those tied to systemic or emergent behaviors.
Sharing knowledge with the team and supporting less experienced animators through feedback and mentorship.
Minimum 4 years of experience in animation for games or related real-time applications.
Strong animation reel demonstrating gameplay-integrated animations such as ambient behaviors, creature/animal locomotion or systemic NPCs routines (please include a clear breakdown of your contributions).
Solid understanding of animation principles with a focus on movement realism, physicality, and behavioral variation.
Experience with keyframe animation for animals, creatures or realistic character performances.
Experience with motion capture data and integration into gameplay contexts.
Familiarity with implementing animation in a real-time game engine and working with blueprints, state machines or other animation systems.
Professional working knowledge of MotionBuilder and/or Maya.
Ability to work effectively in multi-disciplinary teams, especially with Open World, Level and Gameplay Design.
Problem-solving mindset and confidence providing technical or creative solutions to systemic animation challenges.
Strong communication skills, team spirit, and the ability to give and receive feedback.
Fluent English (spoken and written).
Nice to have
(Please note that these skills are not required to apply for the position)
Experience shipping at least one AAA game.
Education or training in animation, game development, or related field.
Experience with creature/animal rigging or behavior design.
Understanding of technical animation or pipeline tools.
Basic scripting or visual scripting (e.g. blueprints) knowledge for gameplay prototyping.
Knowledge of animation logic and state setup in Unreal Engine.
Background in building systemic animation libraries for open world behaviors or AI-driven characters.
Experience in planning motion capture sessions, working with actors or assisting on stage.

Employment type
Full-time

Work arrangement
Hybrid