Motion Designer - Animation & Graphics

💡 About Liftoff

Our Mission: Making the world a healthier place by gamifying fitness

Liftoff is the Duolingo of fitness, empowering anyone to start and stay at the gym so they develop healthier, more powerful habits.

We’re a mission-driven team that moves fast, owns the details, and does the work. We’re fully bootstrapped, profitable, and built from zero to $10M+ ARR in under three years.

🌟 About the Team

You'll join the Product team, working alongside our UI/UX Designer, Product Managers, Engineering, and Marketing.

Motion is what makes our product feel like a game instead of a spreadsheet. Levels, streaks, unlocks, and our mascot Jymbo all live or die on how they move.

🎯 About the Role

We're hiring a Motion & Graphics Designer to own everything that moves at Liftoff, in the app and in our marketing.

This is a motion-first role with real graphic design range. You'll animate characters, build in-app motion, cut marketing assets, and design the static graphics that sit around them.

Your core focus areas:

• Character animation for Jymbo and the wider cast

• In-app motion design: transitions, celebrations, unlocks, state changes

• Animated graphics for features, shop items, and collectibles

• Marketing assets: social, ads, App Store, launch content

• Animatics and storyboards that let the team see a feature before it's built

• Graphic design to support all of the above

✅ What Success Looks Like

• Motion that ships in the product. Files hand off cleanly and perform on devices.

• Jymbo feels alive. A character with a consistent personality across dozens of animations.

• Marketing assets that travel. Content built to be shared, not just posted.

• A documented motion language: timing, easing, and reusable patterns the whole team can pull from.

🛠️ What You’ll Do

• Animate characters

  • Bring Jymbo to life with new rigs, poses, expressions, and reaction animations

  • Build a consistent character personality across quests, streaks, wins, and losses

  • Produce 2D vector animation built for reuse, not one-offs

• Design in-app motion

  • Animate transitions, celebrations, unlocks, progress states, and micro-interactions

  • Ship Lottie and Rive files engineers can drop straight into React Native

  • Work inside performance budgets: file size, frame rate, battery, low-end devices

• Build marketing and social assets

  • Cut motion content for social, ads, App Store, and launches

  • Design for shareability, including formats built to get reposted

  • Turn product features into short, legible visual stories

• Storyboard and pitch with animatics

  • Take a feature brief and produce an animatic the team can react to

  • Use motion to pressure-test an idea before it becomes engineering work

• Handle supporting graphic design

  • In-app graphics: splash screens, status cards, game-like items, collectibles

  • Illustration and vector artwork for features and campaigns

  • Keep your work consistent with the design system our UI/UX Designer maintains

🔍 You’ll Likely Succeed If You Have

We don't expect you to check every box. We care most about ownership, judgment, and shipping.

• A strong animation reel with character work in it, not only kinetic type and logo stings

• Adobe After Effects fluency, including export to Lottie

• Rive experience for character and interactive UI motion

• Figma fluency, enough to work inside an existing design system and hand off cleanly

• Real graphic design ability. You can design the static asset, not just animate someone else's.

• Shipped animation in a live product or campaign, with users who actually saw it

• Clear written communication. You can spec motion, document timing, and explain your choices.

• Comfort in a startup environment: short feedback loops, big ownership, no red tape

🌱 Bonus Attributes

• Marketing and social assets you've shipped before, ideally with performance you can point to

• Gaming animation experience (UI, characters, effects, game feel)

• Mobile consumer animation experience at scale

• Performance-conscious animation know-how on mobile

• Familiarity with React Native Reanimated or Skia, enough to talk to engineers about what's feasible

• 3D or Blender ability for stills and short marketing pieces

• Shipped in health, wellness, social, or gaming

• Sustained depth in a craft, sport, or community outside of work

🧰 Tools & Tech Stack

You don't need prior experience with every tool, but you should be excited to work in this stack.

• Motion: Adobe After Effects, Rive, Lottie

• Design: Figma

• App: React Native (Expo), Reanimated, Skia

• Monetization: RevenueCat, Superwall

• Experimentation / Analytics: Statsig

🙌 At Liftoff, You’ll Enjoy

• Autonomy and Ownership: you are in charge of your time at Liftoff. Decide what you want to do, align with leadership, and go for it.

• Top-of-the-Market Cash & Equity Compensation: we pay for high performers.

• A World-Class Team: low-ego, high standards, and real ownership.

🤝 Interview Process

1. Hiring Manager Screening

2. Take-Home Challenge: animate one short in-app moment (a Jymbo reaction or an unlock), delivered as a Lottie or Rive file

3. Craft Deep Dive: reel walkthrough plus a live discussion of existing animation challenges in Liftoff

4. Work Week Trial (paid, simulating the real work environment)

💰 Compensation and Benefits

• Competitive cash (based on level and scope)

• Company-paid lunch every day (if you’re in office)

• Lifetime Liftoff Pro membership

🌍 Equal Opportunity

Liftoff is an equal opportunity employer. We hire and grow talent based on strengths, potential, and performance, and we are committed to building an inclusive environment where everyone can do their best work.

🚀 To Apply, We Want

• Your reel or motion portfolio, with character animation included

• Source or export files where you can share them: Rive, Lottie JSON, After Effects projects

• Any marketing or social assets you've made, with results if you have them

• Your graphic design work: illustration, in-app assets, campaign graphics

• Your resume and LinkedIn/X profile

• A few lines on why this role