Overview

Shot Gun Pipeline Technical Director Job Description

ICON Creative Studio is a world class 3D animation studio operating from the heart of Vancouver. At ICON Creative Studio, the Pipeline department is responsible for the effective and efficient operation of production staff and artists on a day-to-day basis.

A Pipeline TD requires a general understanding of how data/work flows through the studio from beginning to end. Often with intimate knowledge of the operations in a particular department or area of expertise. With this knowledge you will be expected to recognize when the pipeline is not running smoothly, actively maintaining the proprietary tools and systems which are essential to effective studio operations.

The applicant may be expected to demonstrate their skills through a programming test or exercise.

This position will report to the Pipeline Supervisor (Head of Department)

About ICON Creative Studio

Responsibilities:

  • Manage efforts in alignment with priorities identified by the Pipeline management team
  • Evaluate issues and requests generated by production (tickets), implementing technical solutions as needed
  • Write effective, readable and maintainable code
  • Participate in discussion of, and contribute to, research & development projects
  • Participate in code reviews, training sessions and code dojos
  • Contribute to design documents and proposals for new research and development projects
  • Be responsive and courteous in regard to high priority issues and concerns raised by production personnel
  •  Maintain documentation for new and modified tools/systems
  • Perform code maintenance and refactoring as needed
  • Help determine time estimates for development projects
  • Provide regular updates on current development efforts and projects
  • Notify supervisor of any anticipated disruptions or risks to production
  • Attend regular production and departmental meetings
  •  Stay informed about new technologies and techniques
  • Identify and automate inefficient or redundant tasks
  • Provide consistent technical support to internal clients (artists)
  • Follow departmental coding standards
  •   Follow departmental development and deployment practices
  • Abide by the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
  •  Maintain knowledge of the workflows and processes of the studio Pipeline

 Required Skills:

  • Willingness to understand and contemplate complex technical problems.
  •  Take a proactive approach to learning, problem solving and troubleshooting issues
  • Excellent written and oral communication skills
  • Strong organizational skills
  • Use of Object-Oriented Programming principles and Design Patterns
  •  Fluency with Python and/or C++ programming languages
  • Solid understanding of visual effects and/or animation pipelines and workflows
  • Proven experience writing pipeline tools and modifying workflows
  • Experience with the Shot Gun development platform (Tool Kit/Python/API /Action Menu/Event Daemon/REST)

 Desirable Skills:

A degree in Computer Science, Computer Graphics or related field
Knowledge of databases (SQL) and web technologies
Knowledge of Object-Oriented principles and Design Patterns
Experience in Pipeline, System Administration or Software Development
Familiarity with development practices such as including:
Agile, TDD/BDD, Pair Programming and Unit Testing
Experience of UI and UX design using PySide / PySide2 (PyQt4 / PyQt5)
Prior experience using:
Digital Content Creation (DCC) Applications:
Maya / Zbrush / Nuke / Houdini / MARI / Premiere / Photoshop
MEL / PyMEL / Maya Python API (1 & 2) / Maya C++ API
Version/Source control: Git / BitBucket
Issue Tracking: YouTrack
Production Tracking: Shotgun
Farm schedulers: Deadline
Renderers: Arnold / Renderman
Editing software: Adobe Premiere
Universal Scene Description / Alembic
Additional programming languages: C++ / Java