Pipeline Technical Director, Level II

Position Summary

The Pipeline TD develops and maintains software tools, providing front-line support 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. Receives day-to-day direction and priorities from show CG Supervisor; reports to R&D supervisor for technical and career guidance.
 

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 support 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
• Work 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 broad knowledge of the larger pipeline
• 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
• Assist junior Pipeline TDs in resolving complex user errors; guide Pipeline Engineers and R&D with debugging technical issues

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, Shotgun or similar
• Ability to communicate cross-discipline and provide innovative solutions to pipeline issues
• Detail oriented and strong self-sufficient trouble shooter.
• Thorough understanding 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 a plus

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