Description
The Senior Production Engineer is responsible for architecting,
optimizing and developing aspects of the VFX production’s render farm
queuing systems, including job submission tools, reporting and
analytical systems. They will be active in both leading development
projects and mentoring staff and associate production engineers.
- Integrating in-house tools and 3rd party applications into the queuing system
- Extend the feature set of the queueing system through the development of new features in the system’s core
- Developing tools for artists and production to monitor the farm, gather metrics and generate reports
- Provide expert knowledge and be able to answer questions about the farm's behavior
- Responsible for leading development projects for new workflow and/or tools
- Communicates
with artists and productions to determine technical requirements and
disseminate information regarding project status
- Exercises independent judgment in methods, techniques and evaluation criteria for obtaining a goal
- May have singular responsibility for a project
- Coordinate activities of others as a project lead
- Advises/assists other engineers with maintenance and bug fixing of existing tools
- Serves as knowledge resource for workflow and tools used in production at ILM
- Updates and features additions to existing tools
- Provide support to local productions to keep the renderfarm running smoothly
- Troubleshoot renderfarm issues
- Provide training and assistance to artists on toolsets and workflows
- Expected to lead discussions surrounding future workflow and tool development
- Collaborates with artists and productions to develop efficient workflows and supporting tools
- Participate in the activities of the globally distributed production engineering team, including:
- development and support activities
- regular status and planning meetings as time zones permit
- adhere to development best practices and standards defined by Production Engineering Supervisor
Requirements
Education / Experience:
• Bachelor’s degree or advanced degree in Computing Science or Graphics discipline, or equivalent professional experience
• 6-10 years of experience in the visual effects or computer animation industries
Required Skills / Competencies:
•
A positive, “can-do” attitude with balance: must not be afraid to ask
for help when getting outside experience base or comfort zone
• A clear and concise communicator: ability to keep end users informed of progress and managers informed of requests
• An effective listener: able to engage with and understand artists to discover what their requirements are
•
An effective time manager: must be able to prioritize a multitude of
requests and not be afraid to ask for help if the path isn’t clear
• Passionate about delivering rigorous follow-through on assigned tasks
•
An agile, flexible and quick thinker: this is an energetic, dynamic
environment requiring an ability to adapt to rapidly changing
requirements
• A creative thinker and innovator: able to devise and employ ingenious solutions to difficult problems
• A passionate and charismatic leader: ability to inspire and motivate
Technical Skills:
• Expert knowledge of python programming and the Linux environment
• Expert knowledge of C++
• Experience working with revision control systems and defined coding standards
• Expert knowledge of developing tools and/or plugins within industry software packages such as Maya, Nuke, Houdini or Katana
• Experience with Renderman, vray or Arnold
Preferred Skills / Competencies:
• Experience developing with C++ and Python
• Experience with Tractor, Qube, Deadline, Alfred or another renderfarm queuing system
• Experience with database technologies such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB or Redis
• Experience with message queuing systems and distributed computing environments
• Experience writing RESTful APIs
• Experience developing against and/or deploying Amazon Web Services
• Knowledge of the standard python packaging and installation tool-chain
• VFX, Feature Animation or Episodic production experience
• Experience with Maya, Katana and Nuke
• Experience with Renderman, vray or Arnold
• Experience developing on Windows