Cinematic Technical Designer
Summary
We are looking for a Cinematic Technical Designer to join our team and help bring story moments to life across an all-new open world IP built in Unreal Engine 5. This role lives at the intersection of mission design, cinematics, and systems — responsible for implementing cinematic sequences, building tools for cinematic systems, and owning the connective tissue between player control, mission scripting, and authored content.
As a Cinematic Technical Designer at Absurd Ventures, you will work closely with Mission Designers, Cinematics Directors, Animators, and Engineers to build, integrate, and polish cinematic moments across a broad range of contexts — from quiet interactive scenes to large-scale scripted set pieces. You are equally comfortable in Sequencer and Blueprint, and you understand how both tools behave in development environments and inside a live, streaming open world.
Core Responsibilities
- Implement cinematic sequences in Unreal Engine 5 using Sequencer, including full cinematics, interactive cinematics, and blended in-world moments.
- Own the "glue" between mission scripting, player control handoffs, cameras, VFX events, environment set dressing and cinematic playback — ensuring transitions are seamless and state is always clean.
- Build and maintain Blueprint logic supporting cinematic events: triggers, state management, player possession and de-possession, camera blending, and post-cinematic flow.
- Implement and modify narrative implementation in our writing tools to ensure we're ingesting the correct data with the correct timing.
- Collaborate with Mission Designers to identify where cinematics serves the design and problem-solve where authored content and systemic gameplay intersect.
- Pitch, playtest and profile cinematic needs to resolve creative problems and improve overall narrative and gameplay quality.
- Work with Animators to integrate character performances, facial animation, and mo-cap data into sequences correctly and to brief.
- Partner with Audio and Dialogue teams to ensure VO, music, and sound events are timed and triggered correctly across all cinematic contexts.
- Diagnose and resolve issues at the boundary of cinematic and open world systems — streaming, LOD, world state, and player state edge cases.
- Write and maintain clear technical documentation for cinematic pipelines, workflows, and implementation patterns.
- Proactively surface risks related to cinematic scope, performance, or implementation complexity and communicate them to Production and leads.
Core Qualifications
- 3+ years of experience as a Cinematic Technical Designer, Technical Designer, or similar role in the video game industry. Experience supporting cinematic implementation on at least one shipped AAA title.
- Strong hands-on expertise with Unreal Engine 5 Sequencer — shot tracks, event tracks, camera rigs, blending, and runtime playback.
- Solid Blueprint scripting skills, with the ability to build and debug cinematic control flows independently.
- Clear understanding of open world mission architecture — how cinematics are triggered, how player state is managed, and how streaming affects authored content.
- Fluency in the language of camera and editing: you understand shot composition, coverage, and timing, and you can implement a director's intent.
- Strong communication and cross-discipline collaboration skills. You can work across design, art, animation, and engineering without getting lost in translation.
Plus if…
- Experience with MetaHuman facial animation pipelines or driven performance systems in UE5.
- Familiarity with Perforce and large shared codebases.
- Background in film, screenwriting, or on-set production — people who think in shots tend to do this work at a different level.
- Experience with narrative branching systems or dialogue trees that intersect with cinematic delivery.
- Passion for narrative-heavy games and cinematics
Description
- Full-time job with benefits.
- Role is on-site in Santa Monica, CA.
- Office is located near downtown Santa Monica — near metro and freeways.
- The base pay range for this position is $115,000 - $140,000 per year. Actual compensation is based on market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. We also offer a competitive package of benefits including paid time off, sick time, company holidays, parental leave, medical/dental/vision insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, and 401(k) to regular full-time employees. Certain roles may also be eligible for bonus and equity.
About Absurd Ventures
Absurd Ventures is a media company creating new IP across all platforms and for all formats. Absurd Ventures is building narrative worlds, creating characters, and writing stories for a variety of genres, without regard to medium, to be produced for live-action and animation; video games and other interactive content; books, graphic novels, and scripted podcasts.