Staff Software Engineer - Animation Pipeline Infrastructure, Tech Lead

Job Description

At Walt Disney Animation Studios we have a deep commitment to the philosophy that creativity inspires technology, and technology inspires creativity. Engineers in our Production Technology department are charged with developing and implementing new algorithms to solve unique and challenging problems for all of our animated content. We do this working alongside a user base that shares a collaborative environment with us, and uses the code we develop daily.

We are looking for an engineer to join our Production Technology team, to lead the development of our animation pipeline infrastructure. The ideal candidate will enjoy a diverse set of challenges in building up and operating solutions which span the full software stack, from backend services and infrastructure to developing APIs and artist-facing tooling.

The ideal candidate is comfortable working with stakeholders to establish requirements, stays abreast of industry trends, and can advocate the use of applicable technologies or architectural patterns to peers and stakeholders. The diversity of projects will leverage the candidate's deep understanding of the animation production process and expertise in contributing to the end to end stack of microservices based pipelines. In addition, the candidate can analyze existing systems to identify performance bottlenecks and/or architectural limitations in a data driven fashion, and develop solutions which can be quantitatively verified.

Projects Include
• Building frameworks to enable rapid development and modification of production software for a service-oriented infrastructure.
• Identifying common patterns which could benefit from centralized APIs.
• Developing and integrating newly built backend services with existing and future production pipelines.
• Helping to design, refine, and implement the asset model for current and future production pipelines around USD.
• Contributing to the realization of a studio's vision of a collaborative, media-centric artist experience.

What does it mean to be a developer at Walt Disney Animation Studios?
• Our engineers get the opportunity to work on the full stack of our tools, from developing the underlying algorithms through building intuitive artist-friendly interfaces.
• Work hand in hand with artists and a team of cross-site developers to make the tools we need for the incredibly complex characters/environments featured in our content.
• Develop on top of a highly performant, extendable in-house application framework.
• Develop new artist-centric interaction models using the latest hardware and technologies.

You will succeed in this role if you have:
• The ability to support a team, demonstrate self-direction, and bring fresh insight for shared problem solving.
• The ability to build trust and relationships with technical and non-technical users to understand their needs and pain points intimately, and deliver relevant solutions.
• The ability to code review other's work and produce clear, testable code.
• Understanding of the importance of performant solutions for user interaction
• Exemplary communication, teamwork and problem solving skills, balancing the timeliness of solutions with their sustainability. Able to prioritize competing demands based on business value.
• The ability to guide a team of engineers on open ended technical problems from architectural design to implementation and adoption, leveraging integration milestones and adoption plans as part of the engagement with stakeholders, peers and technical leadership.
• The ability to resolve technical debates/conflicts through objective analysis and building consensus in pursuit of the 'best' solution for the business
• The ability to scope and bid out large complex projects and work with managers to define project plans and roadmaps.

Key Qualifications:
• 7+ years designing and developing service oriented infrastructure, ideally in a Film/Game/Animation/VFX Production environment.
• Able to demonstrate strong software design and engineering skills; familiar with enterprise integration patterns and their appropriate use.
• Must be competent in the design and implementation of maintainable code in two or more of the following languages: Python, C++, Rust, Go and/or Java.
• Relational, Graph, and NoSQL DBs (PostgreSQL, Cassandra, Neo4J, Couchbase, Redis, Elasticsearch).
• Experience building highly scalable, fault tolerant services and maintaining those services under production workloads.
• Experience with containerized service deployments in Kubernetes or Docker Swarm.
• Experience guiding and leading a team of multi-disciplinary engineers.

Bonus Qualifications:
• Cluster based data processing (Apache Spark, Apache Flink...)
• Network protocols and virtualized networking techniques
• Messaging technologies (Kafka, AMQP, RabbitMQ)
• Storage technologies (S3, NFS, pNFS, Ceph, Gluster)
• Familiarity dynamic provisioning and configuration tools (Terraform, Ansible, Puppet)
• Familiarity with Domain Driven Design (DDD), event sourcing and CQRS
• Linux and macOS system administration

Required Education
• BS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering or other related field; or comparable industry experience

#DISNEYTECH

Additional Information!:

DISNEYTECH

WDAS continues to build on its rich legacy of innovation and creativity, from the first fully-animated feature film, 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, to 2019's Frozen 2, the biggest animated film of all time, to our 60th animated feature, Encanto, releasing November 2021. Among the studio's timeless creations are Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, The Jungle Book, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Frozen, Big Hero 6 and Zootopia.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-gqpb59-3-149-27-202-42 in your application.