Senior Pipeline Engineer

Skydance offers a dynamic, inclusive, and ever-evolving culture where innovative ideas are welcomed, and growth fostered. The partnership between unique creativity and technological advancements are demonstrated within each pillar of the company. At the heart of it all is a commitment to boldly entertaining and relevant storytelling.

While all Animation studios look to hire people who are creative and hard-working, Skydance Animation is specifically looking for pioneers who seek to push the limits of what the world’s most collaborative art form can achieve, and to give those pioneers the space and the resources to build a new studio that’s doing something different.

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As a Senior Pipeline Engineer, you will define, develop, test, analyze, and maintain software applications and libraries for the global feature animation pipeline by employing industry best practices. You will also research, design, document, and modify software specifications throughout the production life cycle. This role requires strong expertise in database design and application development, as you'll be architecting data solutions that power our production workflows and asset management systems. The ideal candidate will have proven experience in database schema optimization and building robust, scalable database-driven applications that integrate seamlessly with complex pipeline infrastructure. As a senior engineer, you will provide guidance and help to the other engineers

Responsabilities

• Design, develop, test, deploy, and document the proprietary software used in concurrent film productions.
• Analyze and assess existing workflows and procedures related to the company Pipeline.
• Liaise with IT infrastructure, IT Client Services, Wrangling, Production, and Show TD teams to resolve problems with hardware, software products, or company software systems.
• Database:
• Design and optimize database schemas to support production data workflows and asset management systems
• Develop and maintain database-driven applications that integrate seamlessly with the animation pipeline infrastructure
• Implement data migration strategies and maintain database performance across multiple concurrent productions
• Keep up with current methodologies, technology trends, and tools that best suit the production and the company.
• Follow the team's technical guidelines.
• Train end users to operate new or modified programs.
• Works with the team, providing support, guidance, and instruction in areas that contribute to their artistic and professional growth.
• Proactively look for risks and problems in the current system and propose improvements.
• Present new ideas to the team using diagrams, charts, and presentations that are easy for them to understand.
• Actively participate and contribute to brainstorming sessions.
• Have a growth and forward-thinking mindset.
• Proactively reach out to stakeholders and inform them about the progress of tasks, setting expectations promptly.
• Follows the Supervisor’s and Lead's guidance.

Requirements

• 5+ years in VFX or animation industries or other relevant industry.
• A high level of proficiency in written and spoken English is desirable.
• Proficiency in Spanish is a bonus.
• Databases (RDBMS and/or Non-Relational DB) like PostgreSQL, MongoDB
• Extensive experience in database schema design and optimization for production environments
• Proficiency in database application development using ORM frameworks and direct SQL queries
• Experience with database migration tools and version control for schema changes
• Knowledge of database performance tuning, indexing strategies, and query optimization
• Familiarity with database backup, recovery, and high-availability configurations
• Experience with GraphQL schema design and implementation for flexible data querying and API development.
• Solid engineering skills, with an appreciation of code craft, quality, and technical debt management.
• Ability to work with a team to deliver high-quality software in a fast-paced, dynamic, and deadline-oriented environment.
• Strong knowledge of writing efficient, efficient and performant code in Python3+
• Familiarity with task management systems/frameworks like Agile Sprint, Jira, Scrums, Daily Standups etc.
• Knowledge of working with (and developing with/for) technologies (familiarity with as many as possible here):
• Familiarity working with REZ (package management system)
• Autodesk Shotgrid/Flow
• Render engines like Renderman, Arnold
• Linux development environment essentials, such as bash scripting and general Linux native commands (find, grep, sed, etc.)
• NFS and other distributed file systems
• Experience working with a source version control system (Git preferred).
• Deployment Systems like Kubernetes, Docker, Podman
• In Memory caching systems like Redis, Memcached
• Queuing Systems and message brokers like RabbitMQ
• Web service patterns like REST API, GraphQL, RPC
• Knowledge of developing CI/CD pipelines (Gitlab or Github)
• Pytest Framework or other testing frameworks for Python
• CMAKE, Make, or other build system knowledge is a bonus
• Knowledge of Production front end systems and libraries (good to know but not required):
• Production pipelines using USD and its integration into Houdini(Solaris), Maya, Nuke, and other digital content creation applications and their APIs
• PyQt, PySide
• ASWF libraries, including OpenColorIO, OpenVDB, and OpenTimelineIO.

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