Lead Motion Designer
UX Design • Reports to: VP, UX Design & Research • Full Time • Office/Remote /Hybrid
Your Role at Pura:
Pura has established a solid motion design foundation through agency support, with a set of principles and a style guide to build on, all of which evokes Pura. Now we need a seasoned, highly experienced motion designer - with a decade or more of proven craft - to take motion to the next level at Pura - elevating the work and ensuring it permeates every applicable moment across the entire Pura ecosystem, from product and app to website and brand.
This is a hands-on, expert-level individual contributor role for someone who has led motion design at a consumer tech company before and is ready to be the definitive motion authority at Pura - setting the standard, executing at the highest bar, and reducing our reliance on outside agencies for ambitious motion work.
You will help us inspire a belief in the power of fragrance to craft and elevate memorable moments for our Owners. This is your chance to make an impact in a high-growth company that's redefining the way people experience scent.
What You'll Own:
- As the sole motion design expert at Pura, serve as the steward of the brand's motion identity - the definitive voice on how motion should look, feel, and behave everywhere it shows up.
- Ensure Pura's Motion Principles are reflected consistently across our entire ecosystem - UX, website, app, and brand.
- Own and evolve Pura's cross-platform motion design system, building on the current foundation established, and translating principles into a real, componentized, reusable library.
- Design and prototype micro-interactions, screen transitions, onboarding sequences, and moment-of-delight animations across our mobile app and web product.
- Design ambitious, high-craft motion projects that push what's possible for Pura and set the bar for the rest of the organization.
- Partner directly with Brand to extend the motion language into marketing, social, campaign, and video content, keeping one consistent motion identity across every Pura touchpoint.
- Support the Brand team directly on high-impact motion needs - major campaigns, launches, and brand moments that call for your level of craft.
- Integrate high-fidelity 3D Renders of our products, including diffusers and fragrances, into motion experiences, as needed.
- Define motion principles, timing and easing standards, and choreography guidelines; document and maintain a scalable motion style guide and token system.
- Collaborate closely with iOS, Android, and web engineers to implement animations accurately, using formats like Lottie and Rive or native animation APIs. You will ensure what is built and in the hands of users matches the motion designs precisely.
- Build high-fidelity animated prototypes (Principle, ProtoPie, Figma, After Effects) to communicate interaction intent clearly to engineering and stakeholders.
- Mentor other designers in motion fundamentals, raising the whole design team's fluency in animation.
- Evaluate and recommend motion tooling, plugins, and workflows to increase in-house production efficiency.
- Serve as Pura's in-house alternative to agency motion work - scoping and executing ambitious motion projects internally.
- When needed during certain stretches, flex into supporting UX design on core product projects, applying your broader design fundamentals beyond motion.
Qualifications:
- Minimum 10-12 years of professional motion design experience, with a substantial, proven track record leading digital product/UX motion at a consumer tech company - not solely broadcast, film, or marketing motion.
- Advanced 3D rendering and animation skills (e.g., Cinema 4D, Blender, ...) - required, not a nice-to-have, for producing dimensional, high-production-value renderings of our products.
- Deep expertise in After Effects, plus fluency in Figma. UI prototyping tool knowledge such as Principle, ProtoPie, Figma (Smart Animate), or Framer is also helpful.
- Hands-on experience with implementation/handoff formats - Lottie, Rive, or Bodymovin - and a demonstrated ability to work directly with engineers through implementation, not just handoff and walk away.
- Mastery of core animation principles (easing, timing, squash and stretch, anticipation, choreography) and deep experience applying them to UI rather than character or film animation.
- Extensive experience building and owning a motion design system or style guide end-to-end, with reusable, componentized motion assets - not just one-off animations.
- Solid interaction design and UX fundamentals: able to partner with product designers as a peer, not just execute someone else's spec.
- Strong fluency in code-driven animation (CSS/JS transitions, Lottie JSON, or frameworks such as GSAP, Framer Motion, React Spring, or native Core Animation) - enough to have an informed, credible conversation with engineers.
- An exceptional portfolio demonstrating range and mastery across product micro-interactions, onboarding/key flows, 3D/dimensional work, and brand or campaign motion, including systemized design-system motion work.
- Exceptional craft fundamentals: typography in motion, color, spatial composition, and timing, including where relevant, sound-synced animation.
- Proven track record of presenting and defending motion design decisions to executive leadership and cross-functional stakeholders, with the credibility to set direction rather than just execute it.
- Proven ability to operate as the sole in-house motion expert and steward of a brand's motion identity - self-directed, able to set standards and processes across an entire organization without an existing internal motion team to lean on.
