Overview

Your position as an R&D Developer is vital to Image Engine. Through your technical expertise, you will help us create new and innovative VFX art on major productions from around the world. Reporting to the Head of Technical Production and the R&D Lead, you will be responsible for implementing high-end tools to push our capabilities and efficiencies within various vfx departments.

You will work closely with various department TDs to build efficient workflows. You will become familiar with our suite of open source and in-house tools and stay up to date with state of the art industry products for VFX, in order to advise and guide the evolution of our software ecosystem. Your passion, talent, and ideas will help us bring VFX at Image Engine to the next level of efficiency and performance.

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

Your position as an R&D Developer is vital to Image Engine. Through your technical expertise, you will help us create new and innovative VFX art on major productions from around the world. Reporting to the Head of Technical Production and the R&D Lead, you will be responsible for implementing high-end tools to push our capabilities and efficiencies within various vfx departments.

You will work closely with various department TDs to build efficient workflows. You will become familiar with our suite of open source and in-house tools and stay up to date with state of the art industry products for VFX, in order to advise and guide the evolution of our software ecosystem. Your passion, talent, and ideas will help us bring VFX at Image Engine to the next level of efficiency and performance.

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Design, implement, and support a mixture of proprietary, open-source, and third-party software for several areas of VFX Production
  • Contribute to Image Engine’s open source initiatives: Cortex and Gaffer
  • Collaborate with artists, technical directors, and supervisors to determine the software needs for current and future productions
  • Work with the R&D Lead and Head of Technical Production to plan and carry out long term strategic projects for the R&D department
  • Identify and optimize bottlenecks in algorithms and workflows
  • Design and implement solutions targeting current production workflows, while ensuring they can be generalized for all productions when possible
  • Document, test, and debug tools to ensure they meet production requirements
  • Write clear documentation for libraries, scripts, plugins, and workflows
  • Provide secondary technical support, training, and tutorials to artists and production staff
  • Stay up-to-date with industry trends across several areas of VFX research and production

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

  • A university degree in Computer Science or equivalent
  • 2 years minimum experience developing software in a film or games production environment.
  • A solid understanding and interest in multiple areas within VFX software development (e.g. animation, rigging, fx, procedural scene generation, fur, shading, rendering, etc)

SKILLS AND ABILITIES

Technical skills

  • Experience writing software in C++ and Python
  • Demonstrable knowledge of a high end DCC application and its API (eg Maya, Houdini)
  • Experience with modern VFX data formats and APIs like Alembic, USD, or VDB
  • Familiarity with our open source efforts (Cortex or Gaffer) a plus
  • Experience developing in a Linux environment

Core skills

  • Team oriented with good communication skills, able to work closely with artists
  • Preference for a structured work environment, with clearly outlined priorities
  • Expectation of upfront planning before proceeding with final implementation
  • Ability to take direction and feedback from a supervisor or a peer
  • Excellent time management and communication skills
  • Ability to monitor and identify potential inefficiencies in a production pipeline
  • Excellent troubleshooting and debugging skills
  • Ability to work in a high pressure environment
  • Ability to adapt quickly to new technologies and applications