ILM Vancouver - Senior Production Engineer

Description

Production Engineering is a globally distributed team that develops tools and workflows which act as the foundational infrastructure for ILM’s other departments. As a member of PE’s Media team, your focus will be on the software and pipelines that ILM uses:

• Ingest media from our clients, such as plates, reference imagery, and media from client side editorial
• Process and package finished work for delivery back to our clients
• Process, track, and review media generated internally by our artists
• Keep our internal editorial data in sync with client side editorial

The Senior Production Engineer is responsible for architecting and developing aspects of these pipelines both alone or as the leader of a team. They will be active in both leading development projects and mentoring staff and other production engineers.

Requirements: 

• Responsible for leading development projects for new workflows 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 pipeline running smoothly
• Troubleshoot pipeline 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

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
• In-depth knowledge of C++
• Experience working with revision control systems and defined coding standards
• Experience with video encoding and color management in VFX, Animation, or Commercial Production
• Expert knowledge of developing tools and/or plugins within industry software packages such as RV, Nuke, and Avid media Composer
• In-depth knowledge of open standards such as OpenColorIO, OpenImageIO, ffmpeg

Preferred Skills / Competencies:

• Experience working with relational databases
• Familiarity with using REST APIs and designing web services
• Experience developing applications with Qt and PyQt
• User Experience and User Interface design experience
• Experience developing on windows is a bonus