Senior Motion Designer & Post-Production Lead, AI-Enhanced

VAAS is a small embedded video studio for funded SaaS companies, PE-backed industrial brands, and premium agencies. We work across monthly retainers and one-off projects: product animation, technical explainers, motion design, sales collateral, and client-facing video systems.

Our sweet spot is embedded creative partnerships where we become an extension of a client’s team without adding corporate bloat.

We’re looking for a Senior Motion Designer who is AI-enhanced.

That means traditional craft first, AI second. You earned your motion design and editing skills the old way: through years of real work, taste, iteration, client feedback, and delivery pressure. Now you’ve layered AI tools on top to move faster and push the work further.

This is not an AI-first contractor seat. If you came to motion design through AI tools and skipped the foundation, this probably is not the right fit. We need craft as the base and AI as the multiplier.

Think of it like this: the 10x developer wasn’t great because they found Copilot. They were already strong. AI made them faster, sharper, and able to ship more. Same shape here.

We want a senior motion designer who is already excellent and has spent the last year or two figuring out how to use AI in real production work.

Engagement Type

This is a remote independent contractor engagement for candidates based in LATAM.

You’ll work on a monthly contractor retainer with agreed scope, deliverables, collaboration expectations, and recurring client/project needs. You are responsible for your own workspace, equipment, tax obligations, and local compliance. You may work with other clients as long as availability, confidentiality, and project commitments to VAAS are maintained.

This is not a fixed-shift employee role. We do need reliable overlap with U.S. Eastern Time for client calls, feedback reviews, and team handoffs.

What You’ll Do

Own video and motion projects from brief to delivery. You’ll be trusted to manage project flow, organize feedback, keep versions clean, communicate with clients/agencies, and move work forward without needing constant direction.

Handle senior-level creative production: After Effects motion design, technical product animation, rough-cut improvement, color correction/grading, audio cleanup, delivery polish, and final exports.

Use AI where it actually improves the work. Runway, Sora, Kling, Veo, Luma, Seedance, new tools as they emerge. We care less about tool hype and more about judgment: when AI saves time, when it raises quality, and when it gets in the way.

Collaborate with our editing partners in the Philippines. You’ll review cuts, give clear creative notes, catch issues before clients do, and help raise the quality of the work.

Help improve VAAS production systems. We run lean, use AI heavily, and care about repeatable workflows. If something should not be done manually twice, we want you to notice and improve it.

Who You Are

The non-negotiables:

Senior-level After Effects. You live in it. Expressions, advanced masking, complex rigs, clean project organization. You can build a product animation from scratch and make it look expensive.

Real color grading experience. DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Lumetri, scopes, log footage from Sony and Canon. You know the difference between a LUT slap and an actual grade.

Solid audio chops. You can mix dialogue, music, and sound design. You know how to clean up bad audio. You’ve used Audition, Resolve Fairlight, or similar.

You’ve layered AI on top of your craft. You are actively using tools like Runway, Sora, Kling, Veo, Luma, Seedance, or similar in client or personal work. You have real opinions about what’s useful and what’s overhyped.

Plus:

• 5+ years professional editing or motion design experience.

• You’ve worked directly with clients or agencies, not only executed someone else’s brief.

• You can handle a feedback conversation with a client clearly and professionally.

• You think in systems and like improving workflows.

• Strong written and spoken English for client calls, async notes, and feedback consolidation.

• You make things for yourself too: reels, experiments, personal projects, tests, or side work.

Who This Is Not For

• Someone who learned motion design through AI tools and skipped the foundation.

• Someone who is anti-AI or sees these tools only as a threat.

• Someone who needs a narrow, predictable production role.

• Someone who only wants to manage projects but cannot do the senior creative work themselves.

Schedule & Collaboration

• Reliable overlap with U.S. Eastern Time, especially mornings and early afternoons ET.

• Flexibility for async collaboration with our Philippines-based editing partners.

• You control how and where you work, as long as agreed meetings, deadlines, quality standards, and client commitments are met.

• Planned time away is fine with advance notice so we can protect client timelines and handoffs.

Tools We Use

• After Effects, Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Audition, Frame.io, Notion, Slack, Claude.

• On the AI side: Runway, Sora, Kling, Veo, Luma, Seedance, and whatever is actually working that month.

• If you’re already using agentic AI tools in real production workflows, we want to hear about it.

Contractor Retainer

• $3,500-5,000 USD/month contractor retainer, depending on experience, skillset, and agreed scope.

• Retainer review at 6 months, with a path up to $5,500/month based on 30/60/90-day milestones and quality of collaboration.

• $500 one-time setup/tooling credit.

• $500/year learning and AI tooling budget.

• Quarterly project success payment up to 5% of base retainer, tied to client retention, delivery quality, and reliability.

Process

• Submit the intake form linked below. No resume needed.

• Shortlisted candidates receive a paid evaluation project designed to take about 3-5 focused hours, with a 48-hour turnaround window.

• Top candidates move to interviews.

• Final candidates may be offered a paid two-week pilot engagement on a live project.

• If both sides want to continue, we begin with a 90-day contractor engagement with clear milestones, then move into an ongoing monthly retainer.

How To Apply

Fill out the intake form. Do not email a resume. We read every form.