FX Software Development Engineer

FX Software Development Engineer

What You’ll be doing:

You will meet with artists to see how a tool should perform or is underperforming, then drive implementation, and roll out software to address these issues. You’ll Keep abreast of industry changes and integrate new, and novel solutions to address show requests, as well as integrate 3rd party tools into our robust framework to push the envelope of cutting-edge fx work.

You’ll be working beside top-notch fx artists in the industry, helping them push the boundaries of fx looks and development. Each new film provides great challenge and opportunity to advance the state of the art in fx film making. Often tools are needed just for one shot or sequence to realize a filmmaker's vision, and your contribution will have a visual manifestation on screen, to be seen by scores of movie-goers.

You will enjoy an ever changing problem set that will keep you alert to new solutions. Learn in a dynamic environment alongside FX TD’s, as well as working with other engineers within the Development Group. Find new and inventive ways to help manage the continual expansion of data needed to put the most realistic fx simulations on screen. You can also contribute to other disciplines within the software group, according to your interests.

Minimum Requirements:

• Experience programming in C/C++, python

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent

• Experience with UNIX / LINUX

• Ability to design and implement systems in a complex library

• Knowledge of user interface design and standard UI toolkits, specifically QT/pyQT

• Ability to learn and work independently and in a nimble team environment

• Proven ability to deliver high quality software in a fast paced, dynamic environment

Desired Skills:

• Strong understanding of computer graphics concepts and both pipeline and tool development for Houdini, and/or Maya.

Desired Experience:

• 3-5 years of feature film or video game production focused engineering experience

• 3-5 years of experience with Houdini and/or Maya API’s

• Up-to-date knowledge of state of the art 3rd party and open source solvers, Bullet, Physx, Naiad, DMM etc..

• Multi-threaded and CUDA development and optimization

• OpenGL/GLSL

• Computational geometry

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About the Team: Backend Dev

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The Backend Development team works closely with artists in rendering, compositing, stereo, color science and fx.  We support both off-the-shelf and proprietary tools, developing the workflows that help artists efficiently create amazing images for film.

Some of the types of tasks associated with our group include:

• Core technology growth in our Katana lighting tool, working closely with The Foundry’s Katana engineers.  

• Ongoing contributions to open source projects like OpenColorIO, OpenImageIO, OSL, Alembic, and more.

• GPU implementations for visualization of assets.

• Support color integration for all shows and outside vendors as well.

• Creating cutting-edge, next generation rendering algorithms within our version of Arnold.

• Reducing the time to first pixel as well as finding efficiencies through more streamlined toolsets.

• Leveraging and honing OSL to produce easy-to-use, realistic shaders that just look good out of the box.

• Integrating Houdini and Maya tools to our fx pipeline. Visualizing fx elements within Katana and Arnold.

• Continuously improving toolsets, as needs arise, for show driven technology requirements.