Associate Director, Technical Motion Design

DEPT®•New York, NY

4d•$122,700 - $146,900•Remote

About The Position

DEPT® is seeking an Associate Motion Technical Director to lead the technical evolution of the OpenAI motion pipeline while remaining an active motion practitioner. This role combines people management, operations, and individual-contributor work to build systems that help the team move from brief to delivery with greater speed, consistency, and confidence. The position directly manages and mentors Motion Designers, focusing on technical craft, production judgment, workflow discipline, and problem solving. It partners with Motion Directors, Creative Directors, designers, Project Managers, Quality Control, localization partners, and client stakeholders to translate creative goals into durable production systems. The role owns hands-on pipeline building across concept, build, approval, localization, delivery, and archiving. It creates and maintains tools, scripts, templates, component libraries, file standards, review workflows, and automation that reduce repetitive work without limiting creative possibilities. It also handles complex production work, debugs failing builds, and helps the team deliver when technical risk is highest.

Requirements

At least 5 years of professional experience in motion design, technical direction, creative technology, animation production, or a related role.
A strong motion portfolio or body of technical work demonstrating high-quality execution and the ability to build systems other creatives can use.
Deep expertise in Adobe After Effects, including expressions, project architecture, rendering, troubleshooting, and reusable template construction.
Experience building or maintaining creative-production tools through scripting, plugins, APIs, node-based workflows, or automation.
Experience with localization, large-scale versioning, responsive motion layouts, structured copy handoffs, production quality assurance, and delivery standards.
Experience managing, mentoring, or developing creative team members, and the ability to explain technical concepts to people with different levels of expertise.
Strong debugging and systems-thinking skills, including judgment to choose maintainable solutions over fragile shortcuts.
Strong communication and documentation skills, with the ability to align creative, production, and client partners around a technical approach.
Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, Animation, Computer Science, Film, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

JavaScript or ExtendScript experience is strongly preferred.
Working knowledge of Figma and Adobe Premiere.
Experience with 3D tools, generative video, command-line workflows, Python, or render automation.

Responsibilities

Define and maintain the technical roadmap for the OpenAI motion pipeline, prioritizing improvements that reduce repetitive work, improve quality, and scale delivery.
Build, test, document, and maintain scripts, plugins, expressions, templates, presets, and AI-assisted tools for motion production, versioning, localization, quality control, and delivery.
Develop and govern reusable motion components, UI modules, project templates, and shared libraries.
Design localization-ready workflows, including responsive layouts, text expansion, structured copy handoffs, automated comp generation, version control, and first-language quality assurance.
Establish standards for file architecture, naming, layer organization, collected project files, dependencies, handoff, archiving, and long-term maintainability.
Improve connections between Figma, After Effects, review platforms, trackers, storage, and delivery systems so feedback, versions, approvals, and source files remain traceable.
Remain hands-on in production by solving complex builds, prototyping technical approaches, debugging project failures, and creating reference implementations.
Directly manage and develop Motion Designers, supporting their growth, performance, daily engagement, and confidence in technical problem solving.
Coach Motion Designers on efficient build practices, expressions, automation, localization, quality control, documentation, and sustainable project structure.
Partner with creative and project leadership during scoping and concept development to identify technical dependencies, production risk, reuse opportunities, and automation potential.
Evaluate creative technologies and recommend whether to adopt, test, or avoid them based on reliability, maintainability, security, creative value, and team readiness.
Create training materials and onboarding documentation, run workshops, and provide ongoing support to share technical knowledge across the team.
Track recurring production friction, measure whether workflow changes address it, and maintain a prioritized backlog of pipeline improvements.