Senior Software Engineer, 2D Animation

The opportunityUnity is investing in advanced 2D capabilities to better serve creators globally, with a strategic focus on delivering high-performance animation, deformation, and seamless workflows for demanding 2D scenarios. We are seeking a senior engineer to lead the design and delivery of high-quality 2D animation and graphics features, strengthen integrations with external tools, and elevate performance across platforms. This role will own core systems that directly impact adoption, performance, and workflow quality, collaborating closely with internal teams and market-facing partners.

What you'll be doing

• Design and deliver real-time deformation systems: Architect, implement, and optimize mesh deformation features (e.g., skinning/weights) with robust runtime and editor workflows and measurable performance and quality.


• Author and optimize shaders: Build and maintain high-performance shaders for 2D animation and rendering; leverage compute shaders for parallel workloads as appropriate.


• Profile and optimize end-to-end: Identify and eliminate CPU, GPU, and memory bottlenecks at scale.


• Build excellent editor tooling: Develop polished editor extensions (custom inspectors, node/graph editors, importers, validation pipelines) that streamline 2D animation authoring.


• Define engineering standards: Contribute to benchmarks, testing, documentation, and reliability practices to maintain quality and performance bars for 2D features.

What we're looking for

• Japanese language skills: Ability to collaborate with Japanese partners and creators, gather feedback, and represent the team effectively.


• Mesh deformation expertise: Proven track record designing and implementing real-time deformation systems (including skinning/weights) with solid runtime and editor workflows.


• GPU programming and shaders: Expert-level experience in HLSL/GLSL/Metal; strong skills optimizing shaders for deformation; familiarity with compute shaders for parallelizable workloads.


• End-to-end performance optimization: Demonstrated success profiling and resolving CPU/GPU/memory issues at scale.


• Editor tooling excellence: Experience building polished editor extensions (custom inspectors, node/graph editors, importers, validation pipelines) that streamline workflows.

You might also have

• Advanced 2D rendering knowledge: Deep understanding of rendering pipelines, batching/draw-call minimization, URP, and shader techniques for high-quality visuals.


• API and systems design: Ability to define stable, extensible public APIs and integration points with clear versioning, backward compatibility, test coverage, and documentation.


• Shipped Unity titles: Hands-on experience delivering 2D games/tools with practical ownership of 2D animation and rendering systems.


• Familiarity with cutting-edge 2D techniques: Awareness of the latest methods and research in 2D animation/graphics.


• Free-Form Deformation (FFD) authoring experience: Implemented FFD workflows in authoring tools/assets and integrated them into runtime pipelines.

Additional information

• International relocation support is not available for this position

Life at UnityWe offer a wide range of benefits designed to support employees' well-being and work-life balance. You can read more about them on our career page.

Unity [NYSE: U] is the leading platform to create and grow games and interactive experiences. Creators, ranging from game developers to artists, architects, automotive designers, infrastructure experts, filmmakers, and more, use Unity to bring their imaginations to life across multiple platforms, from mobile, PC, and console, to spatial computing.

As of the third quarter of 2024, more than 70% of the top 1,000 mobile games were made with Unity, and in 2024, Made with Unity applications had an average of 3.7 billion downloads per month. For more information, please visit Unity.

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This position requires the incumbent to have a sufficient knowledge of English to have professional verbal and written exchanges in this language since the performance of the duties related to this position requires frequent and regular communication with colleagues and partners located worldwide and whose common language is English.

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