FX Software Development Engineer

Description

Sony Pictures Imageworks is expanding! We are experiencing rapid growth in our Vancouver office as we anticipate moving into our brand new state of the art facility in early 2014. We are seeking a strong programmer to join the Development team at Imageworks Canada.

Responsibilities:

The FX Software Development Engineer is responsible for the creation of production software and pipeline-related tools and solutions focused in the area of FX animation and simulation. The position requires strong software development skills, expertise in one or more programming languages, and the ability to design high quality, robust, and easy to maintain code and tools. The engineer is primarily responsible for development and implementation of production and studio tools under the guidance of a departmental lead.  This position requires collaboration with other engineering staff, project managers, and production users to develop and implement innovative studio capabilities.  

Minimum Requirements:

• Experience programming in C/C++, python

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent

• Experience with UNIX / LINUX

• Ability to design and implement systems in a complex library

• Knowledge of user interface design and standard UI toolkits, specifically QT/pyQT

• Ability to learn and work independently and in a nimble team environment

• Proven ability to deliver high quality software in a fast paced, dynamic environment

Desired Skills:

• Strong understanding of computer graphics concepts and both pipeline and tool development for Houdini, and/or Maya.

Desired Experience:

• 3-5 years of feature film or video game production focused engineering experience

• 3-5 years of experience with Houdini and/or Maya API’s

• Up-to-date knowledge of state of the art 3rd party and open source solvers, Bullet, Physx, Naiad, DMM etc..

• Multi-threaded and CUDA development and optimization

• OpenGL/GLSL

• Computational geometry

About the Team: Backend Dev

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The Backend Development team works closely with artists in rendering, compositing, stereo, color science and fx.  We support both off-the-shelf and proprietary tools, developing the workflows that help artists efficiently create amazing images for film.

Some of the types of tasks associated with our group include:

• Core technology growth in our Katana lighting tool, working closely with The Foundry’s Katana engineers.  

• Ongoing contributions to open source projects like OpenColorIO, OpenImageIO, OSL, Alembic, and more.

• GPU implementations for visualization of assets.

• Support color integration for all shows and outside vendors as well.

• Creating cutting-edge, next generation rendering algorithms within our version of Arnold.

• Reducing the time to first pixel as well as finding efficiencies through more streamlined toolsets.

• Leveraging and honing OSL to produce easy-to-use, realistic shaders that just look good out of the box.

• Integrating Houdini and Maya tools to our fx pipeline. Visualizing fx elements within Katana and Arnold.

• Continuously improving toolsets, as needs arise, for show driven technology requirements.

Those with a penchant for assessing artist workflow limitations, and the aptitude to implement a cohesive solution, are encouraged to apply.