Principal Technical Architect

JOB TITLE PRINCIPAL TECHNICAL ANIMATOR (GAMEPLAY) Department Technical Art Location(s)  Brighton, Prague, Brno Reports To  Associate Director Technical Animation Job Type (Permanent, fixed term, internship)  Permanent   Job Summary  The Principal Technical Animator (Gameplay) will help define the technical vision, architectural framework, and long-term strategy for character animation integration across the studio. In this highly influential role, you will champion innovation, driving the adoption of cutting-edge technologies to ensure our games achieve world-class animation quality and responsiveness. You will serve as a technical authority on gameplay animation, solving the studio’s complex R&D challenges while collaborating with design, animation and engineering to establish future-proof pipelines. While not a people manager, you will inspire, mentor, and elevate the technical capabilities of the entire animation department.  Duties and Responsibilities   * Architect and oversee the high-level design of gameplay animation systems, ensuring scalability, performance, and seamless integration across complex real-time systems. * Drive R&D initiatives to evaluate and implement cutting-edge animation technologies (e.g., advanced Motion Matching, machine learning/AI animation, next-gen physics). * Partner with Engineering and Tech Animation leadership to implement project-wide animation roadmaps and toolsets.  * Solve deep, complex runtime bugs and drive animation optimisation efforts to meet strict performance and memory budgets. * Define and document technical standards, best practices, and pipeline workflows for the wider technical animation team. * Collaborate closely with Design and Animation leads to heavily iterate on and perfect 3C mechanics (character, camera, controls), maximizing game feel. * Actively mentor and upskill senior and mid-level technical animators through code/blueprint reviews and hands-on guidance. Essential Skills, Attributes and Experience * Extensive proven experience architecting and integrating gameplay animation systems for AAA titles using Unreal Engine. * Master-level expertise in Unreal Engine’s animation suite (Anim Blueprints, Motion Matching, Control Rig, State Machines,  and Sequencer). * Deep technical understanding of low-level animation concepts, including runtime optimisation, memory management, and threading for animation. * Exceptional cross-discipline communication skills, with a proven track record of aligning Art, Design, and Engineering directors on complex technical visions. * Expertise in feature breakdown and scoping, with the ability to translate abstract creative pillars into robust, production-ready plans.. * A profound understanding of gameplay mechanics, game feel, and the mathematical principles behind smooth character movement and physics. * A portfolio or reel demonstrating a history of solving highly complex, innovative technical animation challenges in shipped titles. Highly Desirable  * Strong proficiency in C++ for extending Unreal Engine’s animation system, alongside Python for pipeline tool automation. * Experience contributing to proprietary engine tools or custom modifications to Unreal's core animation code. * Production experience with advanced DCC tools, including Maya API, MotionBuilder, or Houdini for runtime or pipeline integration. * Background in traditional animation or motion capture data manipulation to better bridge the gap between art and code.   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hangar 13  prides itself on the diversity of its team members, partners, and communities.  For this reason, we remain committed to providing equal employment opportunity in all aspects of the employment relationship, from recruitment and hiring through compensation, benefits, discipline and termination.   As an equal opportunity employer, we are also committed to ensuring that qualified individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation(s) to participate in the job application and/or interview process, to perform their essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.  Please contact us if you need to request reasonable accommodation. SECURITY NOTICE -  We have recently been made aware of increasing occurrences of bad actors posing as company HR personnel to gain information from "potential candidates", in the form of job interviews and offers. These scams can be quite sophisticated and appear legitimate. Please know that Hangar 13 and 2K never use instant messaging apps to contact prospective employees or to conduct interviews. If you believe you have been a victim of such a scam, you may fill out a complaint form at https://complaint.ic3.gov/ and https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ detailing as much as possible. We are taking these matters very seriously and apologize for any inconvenience. #LI-Hybrid #LI-JF1

PRINCIPAL AI ENGINEERING ARCHITECT We're looking for a Principal AI Engineering Architect to lead the design and delivery of complex, multi-domain systems spanning cloud, data, and AI — with deep, hands-on mastery of multi-agent agentic AI solutions. This role is ideal for a deeply experienced engineer who owns the hardest architectural challenges, sets technical direction, and serves as the senior technical voice on the engagements they support, while also being able to roll up their sleeves and lead model development, agentic system design, and production delivery end-to-end. In this role, you will operate as the senior technical authority on a cross-functional team, defining architecture across cloud infrastructure, data platforms, and AI/ML workloads, with a strong bias toward AWS-native services and AWS GenAI offerings. You'll partner closely with leadership and clients on technical strategy, lead the design and delivery of complex, production-grade multi-agent systems, mentor experienced engineers, and own high-stakes decisions that shape the long-term success of the systems you build. Why This Role Matters At Robots & Pencils, we design AI systems for a human world. Our name says it all. Robots and pencils means engineering paired with creativity, because every agent we ship has to work for real people in real workflows. That balance is baked into how we operate. Every role here contributes directly to that mission. Here, you shape how AI systems integrate into enterprise operations, how teams move at real velocity, and how products create measurable impact for clients and the people they serve. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days. That pace demands people who take ownership, lead with craft, and care deeply about what they put their name on. WHAT YOU'LL DO Craft & Delivery Define technical strategy and lead architectural design across cloud, data, and AI/ML systems for end-to-end engagements, owning architecture decisions and driving solutions from research through production at scale Architect and ship production-grade multi-agent agentic AI systems, including agent orchestration, tool use, memory, and inter-agent communication patterns Design and build with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and complementary AWS GenAI services to deploy, scale, and operate agentic workloads securely in production Architect scalable cloud-native solutions with a strong bias toward AWS, including multi-cloud and hybrid strategies where needed (AWS primary, with Azure, GCP, Kubernetes as secondary) Design data architectures including warehouses, data lakes, and pipelines for batch and streaming workloads (e.g., Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, Spark, Kafka) Design AI/ML systems including model serving, MLOps pipelines, feature stores, and LLM-based applications (e.g., SageMaker, Bedrock, AgentCore, Vertex AI, MLflow, Hugging Face) Build and evolve scalable ML platforms, pipelines, and infrastructure that support reliable, repeatable model development and deployment across teams Define infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and DevOps standards across engagements (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation, GitHub Actions) Drive performance, scalability, cost, and reliability optimization across deployed systems Ensure architecture meets security, governance, and compliance requirements (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2) Lead cloud migrations and platform modernization initiatives Set the standard for AI-forward engineering, using tools like Claude and Cursor with sophistication and helping the team adopt them effectively Collaboration & Communication Partner with senior leadership and clients as the principal technical voice on strategy and direction Translate complex AI tradeoffs, risks, and opportunities into clear narratives that drive decision-making across technical and non-technical stakeholders Lead design reviews and technical discussions, raising the bar for engineering rigor and constructive challenge across the team Engage closely with engineering, data, AI, and product teams to align architecture with broader business priorities Develop and maintain architecture documentation, standards, and guidelines Leadership & Influence Define and champion architectural standards and best practices across the engagements you support, bringing depth on tradeoffs, long-term implications, and responsible AI practices Mentor and grow engineers at all levels, multiplying impact through coaching, code reviews, and pairing on hard problems Own the most difficult architectural, integration, and agentic-system challenges, serving as the senior technical decision-maker and driving them through to production with care for reliability, cost, and safety Evaluate emerging technologies — especially in the agentic AI and AWS ecosystems — and recommend tools, frameworks, and patterns that improve architecture over time What You'll Bring 8+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 5 years in technical leadership roles and 4+ years focused on AI/ML systems in productionExpert software engineering background (Python or similar) with strong design sensibilities for scalable, maintainable systems Deep, hands-on expertise designing and shipping production multi-agent agentic AI systems, including agent orchestration, planning, tool use, and multi-agent coordination patterns Deep expertise with AWS, including in-depth knowledge of AWS GenAI offerings and hands-on experience with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore; broader multi-cloud experience (Azure, GCP) is a plus Strong background in microservices, serverless, containers, and event-driven systems (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker, Lambda, EventBridge) Proficiency with infrastructure as code and CI/CD (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi, GitHub Actions) Strong data architecture expertise across relational, NoSQL, and big data systems (e.g., PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Snowflake, BigQuery, Spark, Kafka) Hands-on experience with data modeling, ETL/ELT pipelines, and orchestration (e.g., Airflow, Prefect, dbt) Mastery of AI frameworks and orchestration tools for building agentic systems (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph, AgentCore, CrewAI, AutoGen, or equivalents) Strong experience designing AI/ML systems for production, including LLMs, MLOps, and model serving (e.g., SageMaker, Bedrock, Vertex AI, MLflow, Hugging Face, PyTorch, TensorFlow) Strong experience with evaluation frameworks and observability tools for LLM and agentic apps, including building these capabilities where they don't yet exist Deep understanding of AI safety, responsible AI principles, prompt injection defenses, and PII handling Extensive experience building RAG pipelines: chunking strategies, embedding models, vector databases, and advanced retrieval techniques API design experience, including architecting and integrating with internal and third-party services at scale Advanced cost optimization expertise: token economics, caching strategies, model routing, quantization Solid understanding of networking, security, identity, and access management in cloud environments Experience with governance, compliance, and observability frameworks Track record of senior technical leadership and mentoring experienced engineers Strong stakeholder communication skills, with the ability to translate technical depth across audiences Demonstrable, day-to-day usage and expert knowledge of AI-forward coding tools such as Claude Code and Cursor Multi-cloud architecture experience, AI ethics or responsible AI experience, or enterprise architecture certifications (e.g., TOGAF, AWS/Azure/GCP) is a plus Our salary range is $180,375 – $230,625 USD