R&D Engineer - FX / Crowds Ilm

Job Description

Position Summary

We are looking for engineers for our FX/Crowds R&D team to help us develop advanced tools for simulating natural phenomena, rigid-body destruction, and crowds for major motion pictures.

We're looking for engineers who can work closely with artists and other developers to author tools, solvers, and pipelines for physics-based simulation, fluid dynamics, and/or procedural simulation of crowds in Houdini. We need people who are passionate about overcoming technical and creative challenges to meet the needs of production on our upcoming slate of Hollywood blockbusters.

ILM's R&D and Core Pipeline groups develop the ground-breaking technology that our artists use to create dazzling visuals. ILM's innovations have won 33 Scientific and Technical Academy Awards®. Today, we are 70+ visually-minded software engineers, working side-by-side with over a thousand digital artists in a fast-paced, intensely collaborative, creatively-driven film production environment, across studios in San Francisco, Singapore, Vancouver, London, and Sydney.

What You'll Do
• Work in a collaborative, global team of full-time software engineers, and work directly with highly specialized and supremely talented artists in ILM's studios in San Francisco, Singapore, Vancouver, London, and Sydney.
• Develop innovative algorithms and data management techniques, based on the latest research in physically-based simulation and crowds animation.
• Design artist-friendly user interfaces, including SOP and HDA user interfaces, and automated batch processes that scale to high volume visual effects production.
• Integrate commercial and open-source systems into the ILM production pipeline; collaborate with external organizations, such as other Disney divisions, and with commercial software vendors.
• Work with, extend, and support ILM's proprietary software systems.
• Split time between long-term software development projects and day-to-day production support.
• Develop tools within a large, complex, mature, and dynamic codebase.

What we're looking for
• Experience in computer science or related field.
• Experience in professional software development and/or VFX production.
• An intuitive understanding of the demands of a fast-paced, creatively-driven visual effects production environment.
• Collaboration: a readiness to trust others, be trustworthy and play nice.
• Communication: An ability to express yourself concisely, a willingness to speak up, and a conviction to keep everyone informed of progress and issues.
• Empathy: an ability to listen intently and understand artists' needs.
• Creativity: an insightful and analytical thinker, and a creative problem solver.
• Ability to develop software in Python and/or C++ on Linux.
• Knowledge of technology related to one or more aspects of FX or crowds simulation: physics, numerical techniques, procedural geometry, procedural crowd animation, etc.
• Familiarity with open-source utilities and numerical libraries such as OpenVDB, Alembic, Eigen, TBB, etc.
• Experience working with Houdini, both as a user and developer.
• Thorough knowledge of software design/development principles
• • • var jobInfo = {

category: 'Technology',

location: 'London, England, United Kingdom',

req: '10001048',

}

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-d822bm-18-116-40-177-42 in your application.