Science Animation Jobs in North Carolina (NOW HIRING)

Interactive Experience Designer (Unity)

ABOUT LUCID DREAM

Lucid Dream is a custom game and interactive experience studio. We help leaders in medical, scientific, and technical industries use emerging technology to transform the way they engage, train, and explain complex science to providers and patients. Inspired by games, we create immersive and interactive experiences for VR/AR, mobile, desktop, and web - transforming education and engagement through purposeful play.

Located in the heart of downtown Durham, NC, our office at the historic American Tobacco Campus is a short walk from world-class dining and entertainment venues including the Durham Bulls Athletic Park and the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC).

ABOUT THE ROLE

As an Interactive Experience Designer at Lucid Dream, you'll help shape the future of games-inspired science communication, immersive storytelling, and training. First and foremost, you're a designer with a keen eye for polish, brand style, and professional work - and you pair that sensibility with enough hands-on Unity experience to bring your own work to life in a scene. You'll be one artist on a small but dedicated team, contributing your craft to a shared visual vision rather than owning every experience on your own. The work is collaborative: you'll create polished assets, integrate them into Unity scenes, and handle the setup and interactivity that make them feel alive.
We're looking for the instincts of an early adopter - someone who's genuinely excited about new tools and pipelines, and who's often first to try them and bring back what works. You don't need to be a coder, but you should be comfortable with basic scripting inside Unity and curious about where emerging tools, including AI, can sharpen the creative process without compromising craft.

Please note this is a hybrid position requiring three days of in-office work per week in Durham, NC, and two days work-from-home.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES

Art, Scene-Building & Light Interactive Implementation

• Create polished, design-forward art assets and contribute them to Unity scenes across VR, AR, desktop, mobile, and web-based experiences
• Help build, organize, and polish Unity scenes alongside the team - environments, UI, animation states, lighting, materials, shaders, and visual effects
• Partner with the Creative Director and fellow artists to translate client vision, brand requirements, and scientific content into compelling, cohesive visuals
• Handle the basic interactivity hookups needed to bring your assets to life in a scene
• Prototype visual and interactive concepts in Unity to quickly pressure-test ideas before they hit full production
• Implement and refine art assets, animations, particle systems, UI elements, and interaction feedback inside Unity
• Participate in playtesting, bug fixing, performance optimization, and polish throughout the project lifecycle
• Support live deployments by helping troubleshoot visual or interaction issues and keeping your assets deployment-ready
  

Creative Production & Emerging Tools

• Bring an early-adopter mindset to the studio - actively explore, evaluate, and pilot new tools, plugins, and pipelines (including generative AI for 2D/3D, AI coding assistants for Unity, and other emerging creative tech) and share what's worth adopting
• Help define studio best practices for when and how new tools should be used in client-facing work, balancing speed and experimentation with quality, originality, and production needs
• Contribute to reusable Unity templates, prefabs, interaction patterns, and production frameworks that make the team faster and more consistent over time

Creative Collaboration & Technical Problem-Solving

• Work as a contributing artist on the team - integrating your work cleanly into shared Unity scenes and using version control to hand off, and pick up where others left off
• Contribute to project planning by estimating asset needs and flagging production risks early
• Troubleshoot visual, animation, and interaction issues in the work you contribute, across platforms
• Support a complex, high-performing team where multiple, months-long projects are worked on simultaneously
  

WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO SUCCEED

• A portfolio that demonstrates high-quality, client-ready, brand-aligned polish - the kind of finish that holds up in marketing and client-facing work. Game-industry experience is welcome, but a reel built solely around in-game content (characters, environments, combat or weapon animation) won't show us what we need; we need to see that presentation-grade polish too
• Strong affinity for organization and clean implementation at the project, scene, asset, and scripting levels
• A strong artistic foundation and a refined eye for design, layout, brand style, and elegance - including visual design, composition, color, form, & motion
• Comfort with animation fundamentals - timing, easing, motion design, and object and UI animation (character animation is not required for this role)
• Hands-on comfort working in Unity to integrate art assets, build and polish scenes, wire up basic interactions, and optimize for performance and platform constraints
• Comfort working with Unity C# scripts - including with the assistance of AI coding tools
• 3-5 years demonstrated experience working as part of a collaborative studio or in-house team
• Working familiarity with version control for Unity projects (Unity Version Control, Perforce, Git, or similar), and the discipline to onboard quickly into our source control workflow
• A genuine early-adopter mindset - you actively seek out new tools, workflows, and pipelines, test them quickly, and bring the team along on what's worth keeping
• Strong communication skills and the ability to explain creative and technical decisions clearly to both creative and client-facing audiences
• Strong experience with 3D asset creation and animation
• Experience with XR development in Unity is a strong plus
  

NICE TO HAVE

• Background in having worked in agency, brand, marketing, or client-services creative, or any environment where polish and brand consistency were non-negotiable
• Experience working with medically accurate art assets where details matter
• Experience shipping mobile, desktop, or web-based interactive experiences alongside VR/XR work
• Familiarity with Substance Painter, Adobe Creative Suite, Figma, or similar creative tools
• Experience creating shaders, visual effects, lighting setups, or custom Unity editor tools
• Familiarity with Apple Vision Pro, iOS, Unreal Engine, WebGL, or other interactive development platforms
• Experience building reusable Unity prefabs, templates, design systems, or custom editor tools
  

WHAT WE OFFER

• Robust company culture committed to our core mission and values
• Amazing group of talented colleagues, and a management team dedicated to transparent leadership and helping everyone grow and thrive
• Competitive salary
• Employer-sponsored health, vision, and dental
• 401(k) Retirement Plan with company match
• Responsible Paid Time-Off Policy
• Hybrid Work policy
• Parental Leave Policy
• Downtown Durham office with parking
• Monthly team-building events
• The opportunity to help shape how emerging tools - including generative AI and real-time interactive tech - show up in our creative production

Lucid Dream is an Equal Opportunity Employer that gives all qualified applicants consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees based on mutual respect. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.

No recruiters - principals only please!