Senior 2d Character Animator

## About the Role Animation is how Ello's characters come alive — and it's one of the most visible expressions of our product's magic for kids and families. We're looking for a Senior Character Animator to join us on a part-time contract basis and bring genuinely exceptional character performance to our interactive learning experiences. You'll work closely with our Design and Engineering teams to animate and ship character states in Rive, our real-time animation tool. Your primary focus: crafting animation that is expressive, emotionally resonant, and delightful for children ages 4–8 — bringing personality and warmth to every interaction a child has with Ello. The right person for this role is, above all, an outstanding character animator. If you also bring technical depth — state machine design, integration thinking, rigging — that's a significant bonus and will shape how much ownership you take across the animation pipeline. But we're hiring first for craft. ## What You'll Work On - Animate character states — idle, reactions, celebrations, emotional responses — for Ello's interactive learning experiences in Rive - Collaborate with our Art Director and technical animator to ensure quality and consistency across the character system - Work with engineering to ensure your animations integrate cleanly into the live product - Build scalable animation libraries and naming conventions that others can extend ## Required Qualifications - A portfolio or reel demonstrating exceptional character animation — expressive, emotionally resonant, some examples that appropriate for a children's audience, and with range of acting style - Production experience with real-time, state-machine-driven animation tools (Rive preferred; Spine, Unity Animator, or similar accepted) - Strong communicator who makes collaboration with engineers and other animators easy - 3–5+ years in character animation - US-compatible timezone; ability to travel to SF occasionally ## Nice to Have The following aren't required, but would significantly expand your impact and ownership on the team: - State machine architecture — experience designing states, transitions, layers, and trigger logic for real-time interactive products - Integration experience — you've owned the handoff between animation and engineering, designing deliverables that land correctly in a live product without extensive back-and-forth - Rigging — building skeletal structures, joint constraints, and deformation setups for character animation - Children's or interactive products — experience animating for kids' products, interactive games, or edtech - Animation-forward companies — background at studios like Duolingo, Toca Boca, Headspace, ClassDojo, Lingokids, Supercell, gaming studios, or similar ## We Look for Candidates Who - Animate with intent — every timing decision serves the character's emotional state and the child's learning moment - Think in systems, not just scenes — build animation that can be reused, extended, and handed off cleanly - Own their queue — surface risks early, flag scope changes proactively, and don't wait to be managed - Push back when it matters — care deeply about quality and advocate for the right creative decisions ## Reasons to Join Us - Animate characters that are genuinely loved by hundreds of thousands of children - Work at the intersection of AI, animation, and education — one of the most technically exciting spaces in consumer tech - Collaborate with a world-class design and engineering team that cares deeply about craft - Real ownership: ship work you're proud of directly to kids and families every week ## About Ello Ello is a public benefit corporation on a mission to maximize the potential of all children. We're currently around 50 people, headquartered in San Francisco with another office in Nairobi, Kenya. Our team has deep expertise in artificial intelligence, K-12 education, and child development across institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, Google, Apple, and more. We were part of Y Combinator's W20 batch and are funded by world-class investors, including Goodwater Capital, Homebrew, Reed Hastings, Common Sense Growth, Ravensburger, Project A Ventures, Reach Capital, Khosla Ventures, WndrCo, Visible Ventures, and K9 Ventures. We're a small, collaborative team that takes each other's voices seriously. Because our mission is to support all children, our team must be representative of the communities we work in; we place significant emphasis on ensuring diversity in our team and inclusion in our culture. We feel enormously privileged to be one of the few companies with the opportunity to take a shot at truly revolutionizing education with AI at this inflection point in technology. We don't take it for granted, so we work urgently to turn that vision into realit