Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Harnham is a Series C startup at the forefront of animation and gaming technology, building next-generation 3D avatar systems powered by machine learning. They are seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer with strong experience in animation systems and real-time integration to develop ML-driven systems for 3D avatar generation and deploy intelligent animation behaviors into interactive pipelines.

Responsibilities:

• Design and develop ML-driven systems for 3D avatar generation, including skeletal structures, rigging, and motion synthesis
• Build and integrate models for motion prediction, gesture generation, and animation control into real-time pipelines
• Translate model outputs into production-ready systems within Unity or Unreal Engine environments
• Develop and optimize runtime systems for animation playback, motion matching, and behavior orchestration
• Work with mocap data pipelines, including ingestion, cleaning, and model training
• Collaborate closely with graphics engineers, technical artists, and gameplay teams to ensure seamless integration
• Contribute across the ML lifecycle, with approximately 25% focused on training and fine-tuning models and 75% on engineering, integration, and runtime systems

Requirements:

• 3+ years of experience in machine learning engineering, graphics, or animation systems
• Strong proficiency in C++ and Python
• Hands-on experience with Unity or Unreal Engine in a production environment
• Deep understanding of animation systems, including skeletons, rigging, motion matching, and behavior trees
• Experience integrating ML models into real-time systems or interactive applications
• Familiarity with mocap data processing and animation pipelines
• Strong systems engineering mindset with the ability to optimize for performance and latency
• Experience with character animation, procedural animation, or physics-based animation systems
• Background in gaming, simulation, or interactive media
• Familiarity with generative models applied to motion or animation
• Experience working with large-scale ML pipelines or real-time inference systems