Production Engineer

Description

POSITION SUMMARY:
The Production Engineer is part of the California Academy of Sciences A/V and Electronics Engineering department which supports the technical aspects of productions by the Science Visualization Studio. The Academy produces content for its Morrison Planetarium, Stereoscopic Theater, Science in Action quad-HD display, and other venues around the Academy, as well as content distributed worldwide. This is a temporary (up to 2 years) position responsible for the overall support and technical well being of editorial, dailies, CG animation, compositing, and media management systems.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
• R&D: Research and develop new tools and formats for future production, playback environments, exhibits and backend processes.
• Collaborative Planning: Identify costing, planning, testing and implementation of show-specific requirements for new software, software upgrades, hardware additions and re-configurations.
• Production Pipeline Improvement: Collaborate with Production to identify best practices in VFX and CG animation productions as they apply to the Academy workflow; assist in implementing with Production and Editorial staff.
• Workflow Integration: In close collaboration with Production identify opportunities to automate data transfer, reduce engineering, editorial and production time required to re-input information.
• Pro-active Risk management: Analyze potential failure points in mission-critical technical components of production workflow and in designing cost-effective risk management plans.
• Technical Integrity: Facilitate backups around production schedules, ensure near-line and offline disaster recovery is operational.
• Hardware Support: Maintain work stations, render nodes, and HPC storage RAID arrays, as well as playback clusters.
• Queue management: Monitor queue for animator submissions to render farm and run pickup jobs for any failed renders using PipelineFX's Qube software.
• Production Dailies: Prepare shots for review, in coordination with the Producer, animators, compositors and editors.
• Liaison: Act as a key communication link between Engineering and Production to ensure close coordination of calendars, timelines, project plans and progress reports to ensure best mutual use of resources.
• Follow all Academy safety regulations.
• Other duties as assigned.


The California Academy of Sciences is an Equal Opportunity Employer and welcomes applications from individuals who will contribute to its diversity.

The California Academy of Sciences is a non-smoking facility. There is also no smoking in Golden Gate Park.