Senior Gameplay Animator in Southampton, England at Kinetic Games

About Kinetic Games

We’re an independent games studio best known for creating Phasmophobia, enjoyed by millions of players worldwide. Our team is passionate, creative, and collaborative and we’re looking for someone equally enthusiastic about games to join our growing team.

We’re a small but fast growing, friendly team that values creativity, openness, and personal growth. Whether you’re helping various departments or talking about your favourite horror game, you’ll be part of a supportive environment where passion and curiosity are celebrated. You’ll be joining a small but ambitious team where your ideas are valued, your growth is supported, and your development truly matters.

About the role:

We are looking for an experienced and highly skilled Senior Gameplay Animator to join our team. As a Senior Gameplay Animator, you will play a key role in creating high-quality first-person and third-person gameplay animations that feel immersive, responsive, and impactful. You will work closely with designers, artists and programmers to bring gameplay systems, interactions, characters and horror moments to life through animation.

You will be responsible for creating polished in-game animations, improving animation quality and workflows, and helping define the animation direction and standards for gameplay features across the project.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Create high-quality gameplay animations for player characters, ghosts, interactions, equipment, and environments.
• Work closely with designers and programmers to ensure animations support gameplay readability and responsiveness.
• Implement and maintain animations within Unity using Animator Controllers, State Machines, Blend Trees and animation events.
• Collaborate across departments to improve animation workflows and pipelines.
• Help define animation quality standards.
• Polish and iterate on animations based on gameplay feedback, testing and player experience goals.
• Ensure animations work effectively across PC, VR, PSVR2 and consoles

Requirements:

• Professional experience as a Gameplay Animator or similar role on at least one shipped PC or Console title.
• Strong animation skills with a focus on gameplay feel, weight, timing and responsiveness.
• Experience creating and implementing gameplay animations in Unity.
• Strong knowledge of animation principles for both first-person and third-person gameplay.
• Experience with a 3D software package such as Blender or Maya.
• Strong understanding of animation state machines, blending systems and animation-driven gameplay.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills.
• Ability to take ownership of features and work proactively in a fast-paced environment.
• Passion for horror games.
• Experience with version control systems such as Git, Perforce and Plastic.
• Automatically have the right to work in the UK.

Nice To Have:

• Experience working on multiplayer or co-op games.
• Experience animating for VR gameplay.
• Experience with character rigging.
• Familiarity with IK systems, procedural animation or physics-based animation.
• Experience with motion capture, retargeting and cleanup.
• Experience with facial animation workflows.
• Experience with cinematic animations using Unity Timeline or similar.

Benefits & Perks

💰 Competitive salary

💼 5% Employer Match Pension Scheme

💸 Annual performance bonus + Company performance bonus

🍽️ Weekly free team lunches – good food, great company!

🎉 Regular social events – we love bringing our teams together!

🏠 Hybrid & flextime working - because life doesn’t always fit 9–5

⚽ Access to Southampton Football Club tickets - subject to availability and sponsor allocation

📦 Relocation package to help you settle in

🚗Electric Vehicle Car Scheme - Get a new car & Save money & the planet

🏅 Employee of the Month vouchers

🧘 ♀️ Personal wellbeing allowance

🤝 Referral scheme

🎓 Training & Development Budget – invest in your growth with courses, conferences & learning resources

🚀 Training & career development support

💚 Vitality Health Insurance – includes Vision, Dental & Travel cover

🛡️ Aviva Life Insurance

🎂 30 days holiday, including your birthday and a dedicated wellbeing day

🎄 Christmas studio shutdown – enjoy the holidays, on us!