Pipeline Technical Director

Position Summary

The 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.

Primary Responsibilities and Accountabilities

• 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 the 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.

• Collaborate effectively with artists, production supervisors, and technical staff across ILM studios in San Francisco, Vancouver, Singapore, 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 understanding of the larger pipeline.

• Assist junior Pipeline TDs in providing front-line support; 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.

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 5 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.

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