Senior Rendering Research Engineer

The Wētā FX Rendering Research department builds sophisticated production rendering technology for high-quality fine frame rendering as well as consistent and interactive visualisations.

We’re looking for a new Senior Rendering Research Engineer to help define and deliver a research roadmap that drives and champions novel advancements in off-line rendering, using our in-house bleeding-edge renderer Manuka as well as related tools.

Reporting to the Head of Rendering Research, the Senior Rendering Research Engineer will bring their broad graphics industry knowledge, their research and engineering experience and their deep understanding of rendering technologies evolve our rendering architecture to meet high demands of scalability, interactivity and in particular flexibility to adapt to different usage scenarios.

In this position you will work in a team of highly skilled rendering researchers and your output will directly impact how artists will transform their creativity to cinematic movie production in our studio.

What you’ll be doing

• Helping guide our rendering research programme by suggesting opportunities for research, defining them for our roadmap, then working with our research team to explore, test and implement.
• Liaise with artists to understand their specific requirements and support them in using new features.
• Design, implement and maintain flexible, robust software components to manage the interplay of the different workloads of the rendering architecture that scales to complex and heterogeneous production demands.
• Evolve the measurement, visualization and monitoring of complex dependencies and performance bottlenecks in the system.
• Improve and maintain existing code to improve quality, reliability, and maintainability.
• Find and fix bugs. Proactively test new and existing features to ensure the highest levels of quality and robustness.
• Mentor crew within the Rendering department

What we’re looking for:

• A master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering or similar discipline.
• A deep background in rendering research, physically based rendering and light transport algorithms.
• 5 years of programming experience in C++ or related language.
• Expertise in software design for large high performance systems, including scheduling techniques, data management, parallel programming and caching strategies.
• Very good understanding of different hardware architectures and their performance characteristics.
• Strong knowledge of core algorithms and numerical computation
• A team-oriented, customer-focused mindset.
• Experience in movie or video game production. You might also have
• Knowledge of shading languages and paradigms such as OSL/RSL/GLSL.
• Experience in API design.
• Knowledge of current GPU and CPU profiling and debugging tools
• Experience in Linux development environment

At Wētā FX we celebrate our diversity and believe in creating an environment where all our crew feel welcomed, respected, supported and appreciated. We define ourselves by the quality of our work, and we’re striving to build a workplace experience that’s second to none. Here at Wētā FX we value open minds and encourage our crew to be themselves.

We aim to provide a discrimination-free experience, beginning from the moment you apply for a role with us. If there is anything we can do to make the recruitment process easier, please let us know at recruitment@wetafx.co.nz.

Location: Wellington, NZ