About the role
Role Overview
As a Pipeline Support Technical Director, you will be the first point of contact for artists who need help with production tools and workflows. Working closely with artists, production, and fellow Pipeline TDs across time zones, you will help deliver reliable, artist-friendly support around the clock on multiple award-winning shows. Responsibilities include keeping shows moving by resolving pipeline issues quickly, escalating clearly when needed, and feeding insights back into pipeline development. This role is intended for a technically strong, service-minded TD who enjoys solving problems in live production and seeks to grow into pipeline development.
Responsibilities
- Provide first-line technical support to artists across multiple shows and departments, in person in Bangalore and remotely for London and Paris teams outside their core hours.
- Triage, troubleshoot, and resolve pipeline, tool, and workflow issues, working primarily in Maya, Houdini, and Nuke.
- Escalate issues that cannot be resolved with clear, reproducible reports, and perform clean handovers to colleagues in other time zones.
- Manage and prioritize the support ticket queue, keeping artists and production informed of progress.
- Identify recurring issues and root causes, and propose or build fixes, workarounds, and small tools to reduce support load.
- Deploy, test, and verify pipeline releases and hotfixes in production, and help roll back safely when needed.
- Write and maintain clear documentation, FAQs, and troubleshooting guides in the knowledge base.
- Contribute to pipeline development under the guidance of the Head of Pipeline and Pipeline Leads, including coding, code reviews, and production testing.
Requirements
- 3+ years in a pipeline, technical support, or technical artist role within VFX or animation production.
- Strong proficiency in Python, with the ability to read, debug, and fix existing code as well as write new tools.
- Hands-on experience supporting artists in Maya, Nuke, and Houdini.
- Working knowledge of USD and its use in production workflows.
- Strong familiarity with Linux environments, including the command line, shell scripting, and basic system troubleshooting.
- Solid understanding of VFX production pipelines: asset and shot workflows, publishing, versioning, and render farm submission.
- A structured approach to troubleshooting, with the ability to isolate problems and communicate them clearly.
- Excellent written and spoken English, with the confidence to support both technical developers and non-technical artists across cultures and time zones.
Nice to have
- Experience with ShotGrid (Flow Production Tracking) and ShotGrid Toolkit.
- Experience using PySide / PyQt to build or maintain artist-facing tools.
- Experience with render farm management software (e.g., Deadline, Tractor, OpenCue).
- Experience with ticketing and knowledge base tools such as Jira and Confluence.
- Experience working in a multi-site environment.
- Familiarity with version control (e.g., Git) and software engineering best practices.
- Degree in Computer Science, Computer Graphics, or a related field.