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Careers

Current Openings

JALI Research Inc. (JALI) is seeking a skilled and energetic software engineer to join its software development team to contribute meaningfully to JALI’s growing suite of proprietary and acclaimed facial animation tools and workflows licensed by award winning and best-class- video game development, feature animation production, VFX and transmedia character deployment.

At JALI, we are storytellers at heart. We pride ourselves on our deep bench of in-house talent, bringing together an Academy Award-winning team with decades of combined experience in graphics research and animation. Over the past 6 years JALI has contributed to several critically acclaimed titles – notably Cyberpunk 2077, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Rise of the Ronin – that have set new standards for immersiveness in gameplay. Our expertise is trusted by studios across the globe. Currently over 50 game projects are leveraging JALI Software in active production and our experience spans a wide range of IPs and animation styles.

As a member of the JALI team, you will report directly to the Chief Technology Officer and work with a multidisciplinary team to build on the success of our current product offerings, and develop the next generation of tools and workflows to generate and direct expressive facial animation at scale across a growing number of markets.

RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Develop, maintain, and provide support for the JALI Maya and Unreal plugins (jSync, jRig / jRigger, jTagger and JALI C++ Libraries and API used by studios and users across the video game development, avatar / digital human and animation (series & film) industries
  • Collaborate with the development team, founders and end-user stakeholders to produce best-in- class frameworks and next-generation workflows
  • Thoroughly learn the code-base to help direct and optimize it over the long term
  • Coding Python Projects for QA, deployments etc
  • Learning/Maintaining and Optimizing C++ and Unreal code-base with CTO
  • Debugging, QA, Unit Testing
  • Creating Installers for new customer deployments


QUALIFICATIONS
  • BS, MS/PhD in Computer Science or similar technical field of study or equivalent practical experience
  • Strong programming skills in C++, Python
  • Strong communication skills with the ability to convey complex technical information
  • Passion for interacting with end-user clients and creative staff to develop solution-based tools and technologies in the fields of graphics, and specifically, character animation


ASSETS
  • Technical writing skills, working with, writing and revising written and visual documentation and tutorials
  • 3-5 years of industry experience
  • Experience with real-time game engines such as Unreal or Unity
  • Experience with cross-platform development
  • Working knowledge of C#, Mel
  • Familiarity with Maya and or related Digital Content Creation (DCC) software platforms: Houdini, Blender, 3DMax, Cinema 4D etc
  • Familiarity with character rigging fundamentals


TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN THIS ROLE YOU WILL

  • Have the ability to work as part of a team
  • Be a self-starter with a can-do attitude
  • Be cooperative, kind and patient
  • Communicate effectively, especially when conveying complex technical information
  • Demonstrate exceptional problem-solving skills
  • Be confident interacting with end-user clients and creative staff to develop solution based tools and technologies in the fields of graphics, and specifically, character animation
  • Always be looking to expand your knowledge and skill set through new learning opportunities
  • Have a keen interest in video games, film, animation and performing arts


WORKPLACE & CULTURE
  • We are a partially remote workforce and have a flexible approach to in-studio work – the local Toronto team typically works at least two days a week in the office space in Kensington Market
  • Team members meet briefly each morning on Zoom for daily standups and once weekly for longer form status calls and progress presentations
  • We stay connected, organized and transparent using Slack
  • As a small team, self motivation, ownership and the ability to hold oneself accountable is crucial


  • JOB DETAILS
    Reports to: CTO
    Permanent, Full-time

    COMPENSATION
    65-81K + Health and Dental Coverage
    Flexible work schedule
    Paid vacation, sick days

    LOCATION
    Our transit-friendly studio space is part of a shared creative workspace located in Toronto’s eclectic Kensington Market, called 156 Studio Projects, located at 156 Augusta Ave. 2nd Floor, Toronto ON. Amenities include spacious workstations, unlimited meeting room access, kitchen and common areas. The building is not accessible.

    Please apply with resume, cover letter. Only those selected for an interview will be contacted. Applicants selected for interview may be asked to provide code samples. References will be contacted. This position is open to all qualified applicants; however, preference will be given to Canadian citizens or permanent residents.

    JALI
    JALI provides production teams with a powerful, flexible, and intuitive suite of animation and rigging tools to create unforgettable digital character performances.

    At JALI we view digital characters, whether they are hero characters, NPC, or in-car virtual assistants, as actors. And at their most essential, whether they are photorealistic models rendered in 6K resolution, or they are cube-headed avatars on a Minecraft server or Roblox, they all have a job to do, and that job is to give a performance. To power those performances, we develop artistic-centric tools to drive and fully direct the expressive performance of digital characters, enabling story and character development, direction and animation capable of massive scale up with a fraction of typical resources.

    JALI’s procedural animation system employs intelligent automation and is designed with a deep understanding of the principles of rigging and animation craft. With tools to automate and direct the animation of best-in-class automated lip sync, expressive multilingual facial animation, and high-performance rigging and pipeline solutions, JALI empowers animators to deliver cinematic-quality character animation with ease – on time, on budget and on model, and high fidelity in game character animation at unprecedented scale.

    The art of digital character animation is constantly evolving, and our tools are flexible enough to redefine the future of animation — whatever form it takes next.

Join the team at JALI!

We’re expanding operations at JALI and looking for more to join our team. JALI Inc. is committed to inclusion and diversity. Therefore, we encourage all qualified applicants to apply.

Email Us Today

JALI Powered

At JALI we view 3D characters, whether they are hero characters, NPC, or in-car virtual assistants, as digital actors. And at their most essential, whether they are photorealistic models rendered in 4K resolution, or they are cube - headed avatars on a Minecraft server or Roblox, the way in which they are all the same, is that they all have a job to do. And that job is to give a performance. To power those performances, we develop artistic tools to drive the expressive performance of 3D digital characters, enabling story and character development, direction and animation capable of massive scale up with a fraction of typical resources. Since the fall of 2020, when we launched our first product offering in conjunction with the much anticipated AAA game release, Cyberpunk2077 with development partners CD Projekt Red, we have been powering more expansive and more dynamic character driven stories, by accelerating production pipelines and empowering animators with user friendly automated animation workflows.


Our Team

The founders of JALI are leaders in the area of speech animation whose recent contributions to the field include resurrecting the long dormant area of procedural speech (SIGGRAPH 2016) and also for new work in deep learning based real-time speech (SIGGRAPH 2018). JALI CTO Pif Edwards is continually breaking new ground with his graduate research that has provided a disruptive speech-centric workflow for character animation in the form of JALI’s core software solution. The facial animation tools in the current industry standard for modeling and animation since 1998 Autodesk Maya (technical Oscar in 2003), were singularly designed and developed by JALI co-founders Karan Singh and Chris Landreth. Landreth’s award winning animated films Bingo (Genie 1998), Ryan (Oscar 2005), Spine (Genie nomination 2009), are celebrated for their uniquely expressive character faces. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and member of the SIGGRAPH Academy, Eugene Fiume, likewise a pioneer in computer graphics, served as Director of Research at Alias|wavefront (now Autodesk). He is well known for helping to bring physical modeling of natural phenomena into production graphics systems.