We're looking for a senior motion designer with illustration chops: a contractor who can turn ideas into stories that move public affairs. One day you're animating interactive screens for the UNGA stage. Next, you're building a suite of campaign illustrations for a tech company. This is a multidisciplinary role, and it calls for someone who celebrates being part dabbler, part craftsman, part mad scientist, and everything in between.

This is a contractor position, with the opportunity to be reevaluated for full-time if the right candidate is based in the DMV area, and there is business need.

About NJI
NJI is an agency where creativity knows no borders. We traverse industries and continents to design solutions for clients in the nuanced, complex world of trade associations, big tech, and non profits. We believe creativity is the passport to transform perceptions, spark conversation, and shape the policies that change the world. 

What You’ll Do

• Illustrate Ideas: Create original environments, icons, diagrams, and campaign illustrations that make complex ideas more approachable, memorable, and human.
• Set Things in Motion: Bring static concepts and illustrations to life through kinetic typography, animated social content, transitions, lower-thirds, and motion graphics.
• Storyboard to Screen: Translate scripts and creative concepts into storyboards, style frames, illustrations, and animation sequences that establish a strong visual narrative.
• Build Visual Worlds: Develop illustration and motion languages for campaigns, creating cohesive systems of characters, environments, graphic elements, and behaviors that can scale across formats.
• Simplify the Complex: Turn complicated subjects into clear visual stories using illustration, visual metaphors, diagrams, and motion.
• Design for the Moment: Create fast-turnaround graphics and animations for social content, campaigns, presentations, and occasional live events where speed and precision have to coexist.
• Build Systems: Create reusable illustration libraries, motion behaviors, transitions, type systems, templates, and graphic packages that raise the creative floor across campaigns.
• Collaborate From Brief to Delivery: Work alongside designers, art directors, strategists, writers, and video producers to take ideas from early concepts through polished final execution.
• Bonus: You know how to do character riggs, and walk cycles. 

Qualifications

• Illustration Chops: You can draw. You’re comfortable creating original characters, scenes, icons, objects, diagrams, or editorial-style illustrations rather than relying exclusively on existing assets.
• Motion Chops: Strong proficiency in After Effects and a solid understanding of animation fundamentals. Premiere Pro and basic compositing skills are a plus.
• 5+ Years of Experience: In motion design, illustration, animation, graphic design, or some mix.
• Strong Design Fundamentals: A sharp eye for typography, composition, hierarchy, color, and layout.
• A Social-First Mindset: You know how content is consumed across platforms, and how pacing and framing should shift accordingly.
• Craft + Attention to Detail: You catch the awkward easing or off-brand color before anyone else does.
• Creative Curiosity: Dabbling in 3D, generative AI, or interactive design? Even better.