Pipeline Technical Director II

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Position Summary

The Pipeline TD II develops and maintains software tools, providing front-line assistance to artists, and general troubleshooting of the CG pipeline in a fast-paced, feature film visual effects production environment. The primary focus is ensuring artist efficiency.

What You’ll Do

• Develop pipeline and asset management tools to meet immediate, show-directed production demands, ensuring facility-wide consistency as directed by show and technical supervisors

• Help maintain a wide array of existing workflows and scripts

• Provide front-line production assistance across a wide range of disciplines, troubleshoot assets and shots, and help artists with general problem-solving. Monitor email requests, package up problems and redirect to appropriate engineering team

• Test and validate tools and techniques in production. Work closely with engineering teams in testing, and releasing new and modified software systems

• Act as an on-call resource for show production staff, primarily for complex, urgent problems.

• Collaborate effectively with artists, production supervisors, and technical staff across ILM studios in San Francisco, Singapore, Sydney, and London

• When not crewed to shows, serve on software teams working on projects that improve the efficiency of asset setup, caching, and shot-data handoff between artists across the entire pipeline

• Identify day-to- day priorities in conjunction with show supervisors; act autonomously

• Work primarily on tools of a high degree of complexity, requiring a broad understanding of the larger pipeline

• Assist junior Pipeline TDs in providing front-line assistance; resolve complex user errors; guide Pipeline Engineers and R&D with debugging technical issues

• Develop comprehensive knowledge of software and systems; contribute to evolving standards and conventions used in production

• Update documentation for the pipeline and tools to reflect any changes that are made

What We’re Looking For

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in Computer Science or a related technical field

• Demonstrated experience developing and maintaining tools for use in computer graphics

• At least 5 years production experience in visual effects for film, commercials or television

• Proficiency in Linux

• Advanced Python scripting required

• Experience in one or more of Maya, Nuke, Houdini, Mari, Katana, RenderMan or similar

• Ability to communicate cross-discipline and provide innovative solutions to pipeline issues

• Detail oriented and strong self-sufficient troubleshooter

• Thorough knowledge of the entire visual effects process, from shooting to modeling and texturing, animation, rendering and compositing

• Nice to have:

  • Experience with production database systems

  • Experience with C, C++

  • Experience with Windows development and applications such as 3ds max

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