About the role
Compensation
- Salary Range: USD 89,752 - USD 130,000 yearly
- Employment Type: Full-time
- Business Segment: Universal Film
Company Description
DreamWorks Animation is a growth-minded studio and a leading producer of high-quality, award-winning animated films and series. The company values non-traditional paths to success, frequent communication, transparency, and trust. The studio is a community of artists, technologists, innovators, and creators.
Job Description
A Department Technical Director (TD) provides critical support to a show's artists and department heads. The role involves designing, developing, deploying, and documenting new tools and processes for a specific show, project, or department.
Core Responsibilities
- Support production critical software, infrastructure, and workflows (e.g., services-based infrastructure, production management software, pipeline software, DCCs, fur, cloth, particle effects, animation, and rendering workflows).
- Gain and demonstrate a working knowledge of studio coding standards, policies, and best practices to engineer robust and strategic software solutions.
- Build validation tests to ensure software quality.
- Stay abreast of existing and new third-party technology to inform technical decision-making.
- Triage artist and production issues.
- Extend and improve the existing pipeline through support and development of software and procedures.
- Contribute to novel software integrations.
- Gain a working knowledge of proprietary and industry-standard DCCs (e.g., Premo, Moonray, Maya, Houdini, Unreal, Nuke).
- Gain a working knowledge of the artist's workflow, toolsets, and processes.
- Propose, develop, communicate, and implement change management plans.
- Maintain a constructive attitude when faced with unexpected challenges.
- Develop and support custom solutions for feature animation.
- Complete assigned tasks on time or proactively communicate obstacles and timeline changes.
- Continually evaluate the pipeline to streamline production processes.
- Communicate with artists to identify production-facing problems.
- Clearly and concisely document software and approaches to solving recurring problems.
- Deconstruct production issues/requests and direct component tasks to appropriate departments.
- Constructively give and take feedback and work towards addressing it.
- Collaborate with TDs and department leadership when resolving production issues.
- Act as a production/department representative when collaborating with cross-disciplinary teams.
- Assist in training and mentoring new Technical Directors.
- Be a model representative of the TD department.
Qualifications
- Technical Skills:
- Software development experience using common or domain-specific programming/scripting languages (e.g., Python, C++, Javascript, HScript, MEL, TCL).
- Strong programming skills including Object Oriented Programming.
- Working knowledge of computer graphics fundamentals.
- Proficiency in Python.
- Professional Experience:
- Production experience in computer animation, visual effects, or the game industry.
- Experience with writing tools or plugins for computer graphics applications.
- Experience with tool integration into existing or new pipelines.
- Education:
- Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
- Competencies:
- Working knowledge of proprietary and/or industry-standard DCCs, such as Premo, Moonray, Maya, Houdini, Unreal, and Nuke.
- Ability to work independently or within a group.
- Ability to establish and shift priorities in collaboration with Supervising TDs.
- Ability to recognize blocking obstacles and seek help.
Working Conditions
- Location: Hybrid, generally requiring presence in the office a minimum of four days per week.
- Equal Opportunity: NBCUniversal provides equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by law.
- Criminal History: Qualified applicants with criminal histories, or arrest or conviction records, will be considered for employment in a manner consistent with relevant legal requirements, including local Fair Chance ordinances.
- Accessibility: Individuals with disabilities who require support during the application or recruitment process may request reasonable accommodation via the provided accessibility email.