The Mission

At Iconic, we are building characters that don’t just "move", they live. We are looking for an AI Scientist/Engineer who can bridge the gap between abstract intelligence and physical expression. You will build the systems that translate a character's "thoughts" and "feelings" into the subtle micro-expressions, gestures, and postures that make a virtual entity feel truly alive.

The Role

As a Research Scientist/Engineer in Expressive Embodiment, you will be at the heart of making our digital entities feel alive. Your work will focus on developing AI systems that generate rich, nuanced physical expression—from facial micro-expressions to full-body gestures and movement—driven by a character's internal cognitive and emotional state.

As part of a small, focused team, you'll have significant autonomy and end-to-end ownership. You will work at the frontier of generative models for motion and expression, reinforcement learning for character animation, and multimodal systems that unify thought, speech, and physical presence. At Iconic, you'll join a team that uniquely blends cutting-edge AI research with AAA game development experience. The successful candidate will work alongside not just fellow researchers, but also designers, artists, and animators. This is a unique opportunity to define how AI characters will express themselves in the interactive experiences of tomorrow.

Key Responsibilities

• Research and develop generative models for expressive motion synthesis, including facial animation, gesture generation, and full-body movement
• Build and implement systems that translate cognitive and emotional states into coherent, believable physical expression
• Develop and train models on motion capture and performance data to capture the subtleties of human expression
• Create real-time inference pipelines for expressive animation in interactive contexts
• Design evaluation frameworks and metrics for measuring expressiveness, authenticity, and emotional resonance
• Collaborate closely with researchers, artists, and animators to unlock new creative experiences
• Publish and present research at top-tier venues (SIGGRAPH, CVPR, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICLR)
• Stay current with and contribute to the state of the art in motion synthesis, character animation, and generative AI

Requirements

• MSc or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, Computer Graphics, or a related field (or equivalent industry experience)
• Experience with generative models (diffusion models, normalising flows, VAEs, GANs, autoregressive models) and/or reinforcement learning
• Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow)
• Familiarity with 3D motion/animation data, character animation pipelines, or related domains
• Strong research skills: ability to read, understand, and implement ideas from academic papers
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills

Nice to Have

• Strong publication record at top-tier venues (SIGGRAPH, CVPR, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML)
• Proficiency in C++
• Experience with reinforcement learning for animation or robotics
• Familiarity with game engines (Unreal, Unity) or graphics pipelines
• Experience with motion capture data processing and augmentation
• Understanding of acting, performance, or nonverbal communication
• Experience with real-time ML systems and latency optimization
• Background in affective computing or emotion processing

Why Join Us

Be a foundational member of a team innovating at the intersection of AI, art, and storytelling. You'll help shape the research direction, culture, and technical foundations of a company building toward something genuinely new. 

What we offer:

• Competitive salary and equity compensation
• 25 days annual leave + bank holidays
• Private healthcare
• Based in London with hybrid work 
• Inclusive & friendly company culture with socials and game breaks

About Iconic

Iconic Interactive is a seed-stage startup building AI that breathes life into virtual worlds. The future of entertainment is personal: entire universes shaped around each of us, where you are not watching a story but living at the center of one, shaping it. We're building every layer of intelligence these experiences need: characters that feel and convey meaning, narrators that weave your story, and world directors that act like an ever-present game master: adapting, orchestrating, surprising. We're a growing team tackling some of the most fascinating problems in AI: creating minds that inhabit and shape new worlds.