Rive Animator & Illustrator

Job Description

About the Role

We’re looking for a Rive Animator & Illustrator to bring our mascot Milo and the Mathspace experience to life through expressive motion, character animation, and interactive design.

You’ll play a key role in shaping the emotional heartbeat of the Mathspace product from Milo’s encouraging gestures and playful emotes to animated interfaces that make learning feel more fun, personal, and rewarding.

The ideal candidate is a skilled illustrator and animator with deep expertise in Rive and vector-based illustration (Adobe Illustrator). You’ll collaborate closely with our product experience team to design, animate, and systemize motion assets that scale across Mathspace’s ecosystem.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities

🎬 Character Animation & Illustration

• Design, rig, and animate Milo across a wide range of emotes, actions, and celebrations.
• Create and maintain a reusable animation library supporting multiple contexts (learning, feedback, reward, and seasonal events).
• Illustrate and rig Milo outfit and accessory variations aligned with gamification themes (shop, expedition, classroom, etc.).
• Evolve Milo’s animation language to reflect emotional nuance, encouragement, and humour.

🕹️ Gamification & Interactive Design

• Animate and illustrate core gamified features including Tug of War, Class Expedition, Shop interactions, and celebration sequences.
• Collaborate with UX/UI designers to enhance clarity and delight through microinteractions, animated icons, and responsive motion.
• Help develop the Avatar Creator system, allowing students to personalise their Milo avatar with earned or purchased items.

🎨 Content Creation & Cross-Team Support

• Support the creation of gamification assets such as shop accessories, themed backgrounds, and collectible items.
• Contribute to marketing and communications content through short animations, promotional illustrations, or social-ready assets.
• Explore opportunities to introduce animation and interactivity within math problem templates, enhancing engagement and understanding.

⚙️ Systems & Collaboration

• Build and manage Rive state machines for responsive, interactive motion.
• Partner with developers to ensure seamless animation integration and performance optimisation.
• Maintain an organised and scalable asset library and documentation for future growth.

Skills & Experience

Essential

• Strong portfolio demonstrating vector illustration and expressive 2D animation.
• Advanced skill in Rive (state machines, triggers, interactivity).
• Proficiency in Adobe Illustrator or equivalent vector design tools.
• Solid understanding of character rigging, motion principles, and UI/UX animation.
• Ability to work collaboratively with designers and developers to deliver scalable animation systems.

Desirable

• Experience designing for education, games, or youth-focused digital products.
• Familiarity with Figma, and After Effects for animation prototyping.
• Understanding of visual storytelling, reward mechanics, and motivational feedback.
• Passion for education, creativity, and making learning feel inspiring and approachable.
  
  

Who You Are

You’re a creative technologist who loves using motion and character to make digital experiences feel alive. You care deeply about how art and animation can make learning fun, rewarding, and emotionally resonant. You’ll play a pivotal role in expanding Mathspace’s creative capabilities helping us grow from a high school focused product into one that inspires primary through secondary students to learn with confidence and joy.

💡 Business Case Summary

Why This Role Matters

Mathspace is investing in the emotional and motivational layer of the learning experience. To support our mission of making mathematics more engaging, we need dedicated expertise in illustration and animation to:

• Expand and maintain Milo’s animation library, ensuring emotional variety and reuse across the student experience.
• Develop gamified content (avatars, shop items, celebrations, backgrounds) that reinforces motivation and personalisation.
• Expand our gamification experience library (e.g. alternatives to the spinning wheel and support partnership collaborations)

In a full time capacity the role would also support

• Marketing and brand storytelling with animated assets that showcase product charm and personality.
• Enhance interactive learning templates, using animation to visualise abstract math concepts and feedback moments.
  
  

Expected Outcomes

• Increased student motivation, time-on-task, and positive reinforcement through animated feedback.
• Scalable in-house animation pipeline reducing reliance on freelancers or static illustration assets.
• Broader audience appeal as Mathspace expands into younger age groups (Years 3-6).
• Stronger brand distinctiveness through consistent, character-driven motion language.
  

What this role is not

This role is not designed for Illustration of content that’s primary purpose is to be static e.g. print textbook content. They will sit across product and brand design with primary squad engagement with Elephant.

Benefits

What We Offer

• The opportunity to use technology to transform Mathematics education.
• Great team – no politics, no egos.
• Commitment to work-life balance and flexibility.
• Flexible remote work with a Sydney office for a true hybrid experience.
• We partner with pledge1percent.org to donate 1% of time, product and profit to help nonprofits in our community. Each employee has 2.5 days to volunteer with the charity of their choice.