Job Description

Location: Remote
Compensation: Phantom Equity (early team pool)
Type: Full-Time / Contractor

🕸️ About the Opportunity
Inkognido’s SDK needs a unified character and animation pipeline that works across:
Unity
Unreal
Realms (MMO)
Echo Reality’s AR avatars
AI-driven emotional/memory systems
Custom humanoid + creature rigs
The Rigging Pipeline Engineer builds and maintains the technical bridge between animation assets, runtime characters, AI puppeteering, and engine integrations.
This role blends:
Rigging systems
Engine integration
Pipeline automation
Animation tooling
SDK compatibility layers
If you love solving complex rig-to-runtime problems and building pipelines used by entire teams and external studios, this is your fit.

🚀 Your Mission
Create the rigging and animation pipeline that allows any character (AI avatar, player, NPC, creature, AR projection) to plug seamlessly into the Inkognido SDK.

You will:
Build universal rigging standards
Maintain humanoid + creature rig compatibility
Integrate animations into Unity/Unreal pipelines
Support AI-driven puppet control
Create tools for artists and developers
Ensure clean retargeting and animation blending
Your work becomes the backbone of character integrity across all Inkognido products.

🛠 Responsibilities
Build and maintain the character rigging pipeline for Inkognido SDK
Define rigging standards for humanoids, creatures, and AI avatars
Create tools for retargeting, facial rigs, IK/FK switching, and motion layering
Integrate rigs and animation controllers into Unity and Unreal
Build runtime rig adapters for AI-driven emotional/memory puppeteering
Collaborate with artists to ensure rigs support all animation needs
Help Realms team implement combat, locomotion, and ability rigs
Maintain AR avatar rigs for Echo Reality projections
Create automated tools for exporting, validating, and processing rigs
Ensure compatibility across LODs, platforms, and external studio workflows
Document rigging guidelines for internal + third-party teams
This role sits at the intersection of art, engineering, and runtime systems.

🧠 Requirements

Must Have:
Strong experience building rigs in Maya, Blender, or similar
Deep knowledge of animation pipelines for Unity or Unreal
Understanding of deformation, weighting, constraints, IK/FK systems
Experience with retargeting workflows and humanoid standards
Ability to script tools (Python, C#, MEL, etc.)
Strong problem-solving across DCC → engine → runtime
Ability to work with both artists and engineers

Nice to Have:
Creature rigging experience
Facial capture or AR face tracking pipelines
Experience with AI-driven animation blending
Unreal Control Rig experience
Procedural animation or physics-driven rigs
You thrive when solving complicated technical problems that make animators and developers faster.

💡 Why This Role Matters
Inkognido’s characters appear:
In the Realms MMO
As AI avatars in Echo Reality
In mini-games
In conversation with players
As projections across environments
As NPCs driven by emotional + memory engines
A broken rig = a broken world.
You create:
The rigging standard
The animation backbone
The compatibility bridge for all characters
The tools that keep content scalable and stable
Your work ensures our characters feel alive everywhere.

🏆 What You Get
Phantom equity eligibility
Ownership of rigging and animation pipelines
Collaboration across Art, AI, AR, Realms, and SDK teams
Influence on Inkognido’s character systems at scale
A portfolio-defining technical art/engineering hybrid role
✉️ How You Work With Others
Art Director – Style, performance, character guidelines
3D Character Artists – Rig requirements and compatibility
Animators – Rig features, constraints, deformation improvements
Gameplay Engineers – Combat, locomotion, and ability rigs
AI Team – Avatar puppeteering, emotion expression, runtime modifications
AR Team – Projection rigs for AR avatars
SDK Engineers – Standards and integration patterns
You unify all character systems across Inkognido.

📚 Study Links (Internal Use)
(Optional)
Rigging Standardization
Unity Humanoid Rig Guidelines
Unreal Control Rig Setup
Retargeting Workflows
Animation Import Validation Tools

📩 How to Apply
Apply via the portal:
👉
Or email:

hiringteam@inkognido.com

recruiterdarnell@inkognido.com

chrishiringlead@inkognidostudios.com

daylinrecruiter@inkognidostudios.com
Include:
Resume
Rigging samples (videos, gifs, breakdowns)
Any tools or scripts you’ve created
A short explanation of your approach to building scalable rigging pipelines

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