Senior Production Engineer - Platform

Position Summary

The Senior Software Engineer - Platform is responsible for architecting and developing aspects of the VFX production pipeline, creating and deploying core services for use by other engineering teams and throughout the VFX pipeline. They will be active in both leading development projects and mentoring staff and Associate Software Engineers.
 

Software Engineering is responsible for designing, developing and maintaining core pipeline applications and services used by all departments throughout the company, at all our locations around the world. This includes, but is not limited to: media creation, review and communication tools, data synchronization services, core asset publishing services and the render farm tools and services. Our systems provide the core foundation of pipeline services that are essential for the smooth operation of our multi-site, award winning, visual effects company.

What You'll Do

• Responsible for leading development projects for new services and/or tools
• Communicates with engineers, artists and productions to determine technical requirements and disseminate information regarding project status
• Creates new tools and services
• 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 services
• Serves as a knowledge resource for services and tools used in production at ILM
• Updates and features additions to existing services
• Troubleshoot service issues
• Provide training and assistance to engineers and artists on toolsets and services
• Expected to lead discussions surrounding future services and tool development
• Collaborates with engineers, artists and productions to develop efficient services and supporting tools
• Participate in the activities of the globally distributed software 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 Software Engineering Supervisor.

What We're Looking For

• Bachelor’s degree, M.Sc or Ph.D in Computing Science, or equivalent professional experience
• 6-10 years of experience in the visual effects or computer animation industries
• 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
• Expert knowledge of Python programming and the Linux environment
• Experience creating distributed, scalable systems that are fault tolerant and reliable
• Experience designing and developing asynchronous services using tornado or other frameworks using python
• Experience architecting and developing RESTful APIs
• Experience working with revision control systems and defined coding standards

Nice to have:

• Experience developing with C or C++
• Experience developing and supporting scalable systems
• Experience with one or more relational or NoSQL technologies such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Cassandra, ElasticSearch and/or TitanDB
• Familiarity with message queuing systems such as RabbitMQ or Kafka
• Familiarity with service discovery systems and distributed key/value stores such as consul, etcd and/or ZooKeeper
• Understanding of storage clusters and network protocols, including TCP and NFS
• Knowledge of the standard python packaging and installation tool-chain
• VFX, Feature Animation or Episodic production experience is a bonus
• Experience developing on Windows is a bonus

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