Associate Pipeline Technical Director

Position Summary

The Associate Pipeline TD is responsible for developing and maintaining 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 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 the appropriate engineering team.

● Gather information about artist problems and obstacles; resolve user errors; guide artists with deeper problems to appropriate technical teams.

● 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

● When not crewed to shows, serve on software teams working on projects that improve the efficiency

● Take direction from show supervisors to determine day-to-day and hour-to-hour priorities

● Work primarily on workflow tools, requiring introductory knowledge of the larger pipeline

● Develop basic knowledge of software, systems, and standards and conventions used in production

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

Education/Experience

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

● Demonstrated experience developing and maintaining tools for use in a computer graphics environment.

● At least 2 years production experience in visual effects for film, commercials or television.

Required Skills/Competencies

● 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 understanding of the entire visual effects process, from shooting to modeling and texturing, animation, rendering and compositing

Preferred Skills/Competencies

● Experience with production database systems

● Experience with C, C++

● Experience with Windows development and applications such as 3ds max a plus