Motion Design Engineer

About the role

Pure is looking for a Motion Design Engineer to own motion across our product. You'll animate avatars and characters, create emotes and reactions, design interface transitions and interactions, and craft the rewards, effects and feedback that make the app feel alive.

This role combines motion designer, technical artist and design engineer. You'll come up with the motion ideas, build the systems that drive them, and ship them. We don't expect you to be equally deep in all three areas, but you should be strong in one and comfortable in the other two.

Location: In-person only (New York office)

Type: Full-time

Reports to: Creative Team

What you'll do

Motion design

• Animate avatars, characters, objects and in-game elements, giving each a clear personality in motion.
• Concept and animate emotes, reactions and expressions that read instantly and feel satisfying.
• Design UI transitions and interactions across the app, including how avatars and interface elements move together.
• Create rewards, celebrations and game feedback that make key moments feel great.
• Produce polished 2D and 3D animation and visual effects for product and gameplay.
• Build character rigs, bones and blend states that keep motion expressive and reusable.
• Create interactive state machines (for example in Rive) driven by user input, app events and AI-generated moods.
• Set up pipelines and naming conventions so new animations and characters slot in cleanly.
• Optimize assets for real-time playback: file size, frame rate, memory and battery.
• Work closely with product designers and engineers to implement animations efficiently on iOS, Android and web.
• Prototype motion concepts and take them through to production-ready assets.
• Debug and polish motion in production, working directly with engineers on performance.
• Build and document a motion system so the team can extend characters and effects consistently.

What we're looking for

• [3+] years across character animation, motion design, technical art or front-end/game development.
• A strong portfolio focused on product, games or interactive experiences, showing range across characters, UI motion and effects.
• At least one real-time or interactive piece you built yourself.
• Proficiency with tools such as After Effects, Blender, Cinema 4D, Rive or similar.
• Strong understanding of timing, feedback, responsiveness and game feel.
• Experience building state-driven animation (Rive, Unity, Spine or similar).
• Working coding skills in at least one of JavaScript/TypeScript, Swift or Kotlin, enough to integrate and prototype motion yourself.
• High attention to detail and the ability to work quickly in a fast-paced environment.
• Able to work in person at our NYC office.

Nice to have

• Illustration or character design skills, so you can shape new characters from scratch.
• 3D experience in Blender, Spline or Unity, including shaders or procedural animation.
• Lip-sync or audio-driven animation experience.
• Experience with React Native, SwiftUI or Jetpack Compose animation APIs.
• Background in games, animated film or AI companion products.

Perks & benefits

• Medical, dental and vision insurance, with 100% of premiums covered by Pure, starting on your first day.
• Company computer.
• Free Equinox membership.
• Dinner provided in the office every night.
• Up to $60/day for other meals when in the office.
• Weekly dry cleaning and laundry service.

Pure is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law.