Join Axon and be a Force for Good.
At Axon, we’re on a mission to Protect Life. We’re explorers, pursuing society’s most critical safety and justice issues with our ecosystem of devices and cloud software. Like our products, we work better together. We connect with candor and care, seeking out diverse perspectives from our customers, communities and each other.
Life at Axon is fast-paced, challenging and meaningful. Here, you’ll take ownership and drive real change. Constantly grow as you work hard for a mission that matters at a company where you matter.
Join Axon and be a Force for Good
At Axon, we're committed to our mission of Protecting Life. We stand at the forefront of tackling society's most pressing safety and justice challenges. Our approach combines innovative devices and cloud software into a comprehensive ecosystem, all driven by collaboration, empathy, and diverse perspectives from those we serve and work with. At Axon, you're not just a team member; you're a key player in a global mission to make a significant difference. We connect with candor and care, seeking out diverse perspectives from our customers, communities and each other. We are on a moonshot mission to reduce police-related gun violence by 50% over the course of 10 years.
Build VR Solutions for Social Good:
Police primarily go though 40-hours of in-service training outside of the academy a year, where most of that time is spent on topics like firearm recertification, CPR recertification, and other various topics. There is not enough time to train on all the things police need to be aware of. Additionally, if they do learn it at their in-service, they practice it once or twice and then are expected to remember what they learned 8 months down the road when they encounter that situation, under stress. Our goal is to make training that can be more accessible, more memorable, and done more frequently. We call this “Roll Call” training and it is training that can be done before and after a shift to keep skills sharp.
The problem we are trying to solve is simple: public-safety training is broken. When we think about the ways police train today, there are several key challenges: ineffective training, training that is not scalable, and cost.
Axon’s VR team strives to create engaging and effective training that provides scenario feedback. Our mission is to help make Community Engagement Training and less-lethal weapon training (like TASER) so that officers are prepared to use these alternatives to Use of Force.
Given that majority police interactions involve verbal and non-verbal interactions, we are putting an emphasis on hand gestures and natural language processing to factor in the trainee’s body language, as well as what they say and how they say it. The vision is that all together will impact how the trainee interacts with the NPC (Non-Playable Characters) in the training scenario. Meanwhile a trainer is able to observe these interactions and provide feedback to the trainee though a post-training debrief, with all of these products tying back into the Axon Ecosystem through Axon Academy, Axon Evidence, Axon Performance, and Axon Standards.
Your Impact
We are working with cutting edge technology and need your help to make it all come together. You will join an interdisciplinary team tackling the biggest challenges in public safety training head-on, including immersive VR based empathy, coping and de-escalation training to help officers engage with the communities they serve, with greater awareness and safety.
As one of the expanding members of the Axon’s VR team, the Senior Technical Animator will be that bridge between art and technical. They will elevate the visuals of our projects through inventive and efficient shaders while helping the rest of the art team deliver the best possible content under our technical restrictions. This role will partner with the Art, engineering, content, UX and user research teams to create the best visual immersive quality products for our trainings.
We believe that happy teams make the best products, so we foster a friendly, open, introspective team culture that encourages everyone to speak their mind, collaborate together, and have fun. The team conducts daily check-ins, open format meetings, as well as a weekly VR Happy Hour in headset!
We believe we can only succeed if we deeply understand our customers and get to know them. We spend a lot of time with law enforcement officers to learn about their needs, watch their experience and see the real impact of our work. We also work closely with our Axon Community Impact team, along with other community subject experts to create our content and curriculum to reflect the needs of both law enforcement + community.
We are an equal opportunity employer that promotes justice, advances equity, values diversity and fosters inclusion. We’re committed to hiring the best talent — regardless of race, creed, color, ancestry, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship status, marital status, disability, gender identity, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances — and empowering all of our employees so they can do their best work. If you have a disability or special need that requires assistance or accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please email recruitingops@axon.com.
What You’ll Do
Location: Seattle, WA or USA-Remote
Reports to: Lead Technical Arnimato, VR
Direct Reports: None
What about the day-to-day?
You will focus on supporting the Art team to help push for more efficient workflows and help push for shaders, materials, and art asset prototypes so they can realize their work, and be a strategic partner to Art, UX, Product Management and Engineering. On any given day you may find yourself:
- Creating production pipelines to improve rapid integration and testing
- Communicating pipelines and methods to other artist and software engineers
- Optimizing Animation tools and plugins to work effectively in game engines
- Collaborating with Tech Art and the Animation Team to evolve the animation system
- Attending stand ups to update team management on project status and to share out progress
What You'll Do
You will be a key member of the VR Art Team, working to deliver higher quality animations for our VR product. You will have a critical role in defining the Animation Pipeline. On any given day you may find yourself:
- Create and maintain animation systems, including state machines, blend trees, and animation controllers
- Develop and implement high-quality animations for characters, props, and environments within Unity
- Collaborate closely with the Animation team to create seamless and immersive animations that enhance the user experience
- Stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends and technologies to continuously improve our animation workflows and techniques
- Troubleshoot and resolve technical animation issues, ensuring smooth integration of animations into the game engine
- Create documentation of the animation pipeline and tools while they are being developed
- Elevate animation processes and educate teammates on best practices within the animation pipeline
What You Bring
- Experience in 3D engines working with gameplay animation features and systems
- Professional experience working in Unity or Unreal animation system; Unity preferred
- Experience building engine-side control rigs that facilitate motion editing
- Experience with Motion Matching system and Motion Matching pipelines
- Expertise working with motion capture and integrating motion capture data into Unity
- Experience with C# and familiarity with the Maya API
- Must be able to work both independently and collaboratively (with an emphasis on working in ambiguous environments)
- Ability to work with cross-functional teams (includes Engineering, Design and Product teams)
Requirements:
- Portfolio showcasing the best of your work with animation and any other relevant materials
- Experience with character animations
- 5+ years working in Gaming and/or VR industry
- 5+ years of Unity or Unreal gaming engine experience
Benefits That Benefit You
- Competitive salary and 401K with employer match.
- Discretionary paid time off.
- Robust parental leave policy.
- An award-winning office/working environment.
- Ride along with real police officers in real life situations, explore wide range of third-party VR content, get inspired.
- Get paid to play
- And more...
The Pay: Axon is a total compensation company, meaning compensation is made up of base pay, bonus, and stock awards. The starting base pay for this role is between USD 108,000 in the lowest geographic market and USD 162,000 in the highest geographic market. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: level, function, training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, geographic market, and often a combination of all these factors. Our benefits offer an array of options to help support you physically, financially and emotionally through the big milestones and in your everyday life. To see more details on our benefits offerings please visit www.axon.com/careers/benefits.
Don’t meet every single requirement? That's ok. At Axon, we Aim Far. We think big with a long-term view because we want to reinvent the world to be a safer, better place. We are also committed to building diverse teams that reflect the communities we serve.
Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they check every box in the job description. If you’re excited about this role and our mission to Protect Life but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification listed here, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.
Important Notes
The above job description is not intended as, nor should it be construed as, exhaustive of all duties, responsibilities, skills, efforts, or working conditions associated with this job. The job description may change or be supplemented at any time in accordance with business needs and conditions.
Some roles may also require legal eligibility to work in a firearms environment.
Axon’s mission is to Protect Life and is committed to the well-being and safety of its employees as well as Axon’s impact on the environment. All Axon employees must be aware of and committed to the appropriate environmental, health, and safety regulations, policies, and procedures. Axon employees are empowered to report safety concerns as they arise and activities potentially impacting the environment.
We are an equal opportunity employer that promotes justice, advances equity, values diversity and fosters inclusion. We’re committed to hiring the best talent — regardless of race, creed, color, ancestry, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship status, marital status, disability, gender identity, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances — and empowering all of our employees so they can do their best work. If you have a disability or special need that requires assistance or accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please email recruitingops@axon.com. Please note that this email address is for accommodation purposes only. Axon will not respond to inquiries for other purposes.
