Are you a VFX artist with Python experience? Or pipeline developer with experience creating visual effects in Maya? We are looking for someone with experience creating both art and tools to support teams of artists who are creating and animating assets for motion picture visual effects.

Production Engineering supports and builds software to helps our crew make movies. One of our responsibilities is the virtual production system used for motion capture shoots. As a technical director, you will act as liaison between artists and developers, interacting directly with both. You will help artists learn our tools and workflows and communicate problems back to the developers when necessary.

You will:

• Provide frontline artist support at a remote facility in Los Angeles.
• Troubleshoot software and liaise with the developer team to get issues resolved.
• Work with developers to identify underlying causes and propose artist-friendly solutions.
• Work with the release manager to test new software and workflows.
• Work with artists to demonstrate new software and workflows and gather feedback.

You must:

• Currently reside in, and have the right to work in, the United States
• 2+ years professional experience in the VFX industry as a technical director, pipeline developer or artist
• 2+ years professional experience as a software developer (preferably using Python)
• Be comfortable using Maya or MotionBuilder in complex environments.
• Be comfortable in a Linux development environment.
• Be curious about the underlying concepts, practices, and limitations of VFX.
• Have excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Enjoy exciting and customer focused environments!

If this sounds like you – we would love to hear from you!

The Rendering department at Weta Digital is seeking a Compiler Engineer to advance the state of the art in shading language compiler technology and related systems. Extensive experience in compiler design is required, including parsing, typechecking, intermediate representations, and code generation.

The ideal candidate will have a strong academic background including program analysis, program transformation and optimization, and programming language design. Familiarity with shading languages and computer graphics is desirable. Experience with high performance systems that include multi-threading, vectorization, and GPU acceleration is a plus.

Responsibilities:

• Accelerate shading performance in Manuka, a world-class renderer for cinematic visual effects and animation.
• Work with shading department to develop new shader authoring techniques.
• Improve compiler infrastructure, including intermediate representation and code generation.
• Extend the shading language with advanced features (e.g. templates)
• Investigate vectorization and GPU code generation.
• Improve and maintain existing code to improve quality, reliability, and maintainability.
• Find and fix bugs. Proactively test new and existing features to ensure the highest levels of quality.

Requirements:

• A degree in Computer Science and a strong foundation in object-oriented programming.
• Extensive experience writing compilers, including parsing, typechecking, and code generation.
• Extensive programming experience in C++.
• Ability to work independently on a self-directed team in a rapidly changing, deadline-oriented environment.

Desirable qualifications and skills:

• A masters or Ph.D. in Computer Science.
• Understanding of static single assignment and other intermediate representations.
• Familiarity with advanced program transformations like specialization.
• Hands-on experience with the LLVM compiler toolkit.
• Thorough understanding of CPU architecture and the memory hierarchy.
• Knowledge of vectorization is a plus.
• Familiarity with GPU programming.
• Hands-on experience with shading languages
• Knowledge of various rendering technologies, including path tracing, geometry processing, etc.

If this sounds like you – please get in touch – we would love to hear from you!

Weta Digital requires a mid-level to senior technical director to work within the Layout Department.

The specific job requirements are:

• Knowledge of Maya with generalist skills in camera, modelling, animation and rendering
  
• Comprehension of photographic composition and understanding of camera lenses
  
• Ability to match photographic reference of an environment (natural or architectural) with a minimum of assets
  
• Strong technical, communication and organizational skills
  
• A solid understanding of matchmove concepts
  
• Previous Layout or Level Design experience a plus
  
• Knowledge of Nuke, scripting abilities in python and mel a plus
  
• At least 3 years layout experience in Visual Effects on feature films

If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you!

Weta Digital is seeking a Senior Build Engineer to improve our automated build and release infrastructure. Key aspects of the role include developing standards for building a wide variety of complex C++ and Python projects, and collaborating with engineers from multiple departments to ensure that a common set of best practices is widely adopted. Extensive Python programming experience is a prerequisite, and in-depth experience with a wide range of build systems is required. The ideal candidate will also have a proven track record developing large-scale applications in C++.

Requirements:

• 3+ years of experience as a build engineer for a large software project.
• 3+ years of Python programming experience.
• Comprehensive knowledge of best practices in automating the building C++ and Python projects.
• Hands-on experience with a wide variety of build automation frameworks (e.g. make, cmake, Ninja, Waf).
• Ability to work independently with numerous stakeholders in a customer-oriented production environment.

Desirable experience and skills:

• A degree in Computer Science or a strong background in software engineering.
• Experience programming in C/C++ on a large-scale project.
• Familiarity with Agile development, continuous integration, and automated testing.
• Experience developing tools for visual effects or animated feature production.
• Comfortable working in a Linux development environment.

If this sounds like you – please get in touch – we would LOVE to hear from you!

The Lighting Department Crew Coordinator is responsible for the administration tasks of the Lighting Department and supports the Head of Department and Department Manager in the daily running of the Lighting Department. This role is primarily admin based with aspects of crew support. Reports to Department Manager.

Needs to do:

• Support Department Manager in assessing incoming work across projects
• Support artists within the Lighting department
• Handles administration tasks within the department
• Note taking during meetings when requested
• Manage the agendas for the department meetings, leads meetings and CG supes meetings
• Handle the planning & administration of show seating
• Covers meetings when requested by Dept Manager
• Assist in the onboarding of new crew into the department
• Performs Health & Safety inductions when required
• Assist in the recruitment process alongside HOD & Dept Manager
• Provide sickness and leave cover for the Dept Manager

Needs to know:

• Considerable knowledge of VFX workflow, especially departments directly up and downstream of dept
• 2+ years of experience at a coordinator level, either within or outside the company
• Minimum of 3 years experience in VFX or related field
• Artist Management
• Knowledge of production tools preferred, shotgun, Microsoft office packages

Needs to be:

• Confident clear communicator
• Sharp and resilient
• Organised and uses initiative
• Ability to handle confidential information
• Able to multitask efficiently and effectively
• Able to work independently
• Calm and personable under pressure
• Ability to work 50 hours and have flexibility around evening finish times

If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you.

We’re a small team of engineers looking after a lot of infrastructure. We monitor, improve, install and manage the infrastructure that supports over 1500 crew and the delivery of world leading visual effects.

We support thousands of servers, petabytes of network storage, a diverse network setup, and have to meet interesting security requirements. Behind our crew and the films we work on, is the architecture built by the infrastructure team. We’re always on call to keep our systems up and running ensuring we deliver on time and ensure our crew have the best experience possible.

To complement the skillset in our team, we are looking for a senior infrastructure engineer with strong hands-on experience and knowledge in Microsoft technologies. e.g. Windows, PowerShell and Active Directory, as well as the cloud based, e.g. Office 365, Exchange Online, Security and Compliance, and Azure AD/risk identification and mitigation features.

Our team culture of curiosity, problem-solving and openness is key to its success. We’re wanting to add to our team someone who loves learning new things, is adaptable and creative. Infrastructure Engineers perform both day-to-day support and project work to sustain and improve our large (several thousand hosts), primarily cross-platform infrastructure.

Responsibilities:

• Senior engineer helping design, architecture and implementation of Microsoft technologies.
• Ensure systems are monitored well to ensure service levels, proactive resolution of issues, and uptime.
• Discover and implement innovative solutions to difficult infrastructure problems.
• Your distaste for toil will drive you to automating the response to all non-exceptional service conditions.
• Work directly with crew to understand their requirements, processes and objectives and setting up solutions appropriate to their needs.
• Interact with vendors to evaluate and configure solution offerings as required.
• Prepare purchasing/specifications and verify bills of materials.
• Complete scheduled outage, maintenance and remedial work outside of normal working hours.
• Participation in the Systems on-call and ticket resolution roster.
• Write technical procedures and documentation.

Needs to know:

• Administering AD and Windows servers.
• Ability to script with PowerShell.
• Basic to Intermediate knowledge of Linux operating systems.
• Ability to learn new things quickly.
• Good understanding of common infrastructure services (DHCP, DNS, email etc.)

Nice to have:

• Experience with Administering OSX.
• Experience managing and optimizing (large scale) storage and cache configurations – NFS, CIFS, ZFS, NetApp, Avere.
• Advanced networking knowledge (BGP, OSPF, VRRP, Firewalls.)
• High performance computing (HPC) environments.
• Understanding and experience using RDBMS software such as MySQL and PostgreSQL.
• Monitoring/Automation/Configuration tools (Nagios, Cacti, Puppet, Chef, SaltStack, Cfengine, Splunk, ELK stack.)
• Archive and Backup systems configuration and testing (DMF, CommVault.)
• Mac OS X and Windows enterprise deployments.
• VMware experience.
• Nutanix or other Hyperconverged platform experience.
• Clustered Filesystem experience (e.g. GPFS, Lustre.)
• Prior experience in the VFX production, entertainment, media or gaming industries.

If this sounds like you – we would LOVE to hear from you!

Our team culture of curiosity, problem-solving and openness is key to its success. We’re wanting to add to our team someone who loves learning new things, is adaptable and creative.

Summary:

We’re a small team of engineers looking after a lot of infrastructure. We monitor, improve, install and manage the infrastructure that supports over 1500 crew and the delivery of world leading visual effects. We support hundreds of servers, Petabytes of network storage, a diverse network setup, and have to meet interesting security requirements. Behind our crew and the films we work on, is the architecture built by the infrastructure team. We’re always on call to keep our systems up and running ensuring we deliver on time and ensure our crew have the best experience possible.

To complement the skillset in our team, we are looking for a senior Infrastructure engineer with strong hands-on experience in leading a team and knowledge in Storage technologies primarily on-premise Storage systems (e.g. NetApp, Oracle ZFS and Pure Storage), Archival and Backup systems (DMF, Commvault with IntelliSnap), and also software defined Scaleout storage (Ceph or IBM Spectrum Scale). Infrastructure Engineers perform both day-to-day support and project work to sustain and improve our large (several thousand hosts), primarily cross-platform infrastructure.

As the lead of the storage team you'll be responsible for keeping in contact with engineers, prioritising and assigning work, coaching and mentoring your team members.

Responsibilities:

• You lead a team of Engineers to deliver the best possible storage solutions to the company
• Your team provide strategic technical direction to ensuring continuous improvement
• You lead by example, care for your team, and establish credibility with the quality of your own and your team's work
• You manage scheduling of work and appropriate IT resourcing
• You act as a mentor to all team members
• You ensure systems are monitored well to ensure service levels, proactive resolution of issues, and uptime
• You discover and implement creative solutions to difficult infrastructure problems
• Your distaste for toil will drive you to automating the response to all non-exceptional service conditions.
• You work directly with crew to understand their requirements, processes and objectives and setting up solutions appropriate to their needs.
• You Interact with vendors to evaluate and configure solution offerings as required
• Prepare purchasing/specifications and verify bills of materials
• You complete scheduled outage, maintenance and remedial work outside of normal working hours
• You participate in the Infrastructure on-call and ticket resolution roster
• You write technical procedures and maintain existing documentation

Required Skills:

• How to manage, support, and architect complex storage solutions
• NAS and SAN protocols (NFS, CIFS, iSCSI, FCP)
• Proven work experience as a team leader or supervisor, or relevant training / degree
• Superb communication and leadership skills
• Organizational and time-management skills
• How to learn new things quickly
• Deep understanding of common infrastructure services (DHCP, DNS, email etc.)
• Solid experience with Linux storage and networking

Desirable Experience:

• Specific storage systems (NetApp Data ONTAP filers, Oracle ZFS storage appliance, Ceph, IBM Spectrum Scale, Pure Storage M/X series)
• Data archival and backup (HPE (SGI) DMF, Commvault, Tape library management and maintenance)
• Managing and optimizing (large scale) storage and cache configurations – NFS, CIFS, ZFS, NetApp, Avere
• Enterprise networking knowledge
• Maintaining a large leaf and spine OSPF/ECMP network
• Configuring enterprise networking equipment (any vendor) a plus
• Virtualization and containerization (Vmware, Docker/Kubernetes)
• High performance computing (HPC) environments
• Understanding and using RDBMS software such as MySQL and PostgreSQL
• Monitoring/Automation/Configuration tools (Nagios, Puppet, ELK stack, Grafana)
• Prior experience in the VFX production, entertainment, media or gaming industries

If this sounds like you – we would LOVE to hear from you!

Job Purpose

Responsible for overall show schedule and for managing everything required for efficient running of the Show. Reports to VFX Producer.

Needs to do

• Create an overall show schedule for all phases of production.
• Schedule and plan resource requirements with the VFX Producer, VFX Supervisor and Resource Manager to plan an effective and efficient approach to completing the show within contractually agreed deadlines.
• Track overall Show Schedule (ie. Shots/Assets). Ensure the VFX team understands the goals and milestone deadlines for assets, shots, sequences and any R&D projects required.
• Responsible for hitting scheduled targets and working with both department production & show production to ensure the schedule is on track.
• Provide regular milestone reports and liaise with departments regarding milestones
• Schedule new turnovers and attend turnover meetings
• Input shots into Shotgun as required
• Establish workflow for organizing and tracking incoming data and then hand off to PA, monitor workflow through out project
• Report Show progress and any delays to VFX Producer
• Inform all necessary parties of any possible/actual delays, reasons and what is being done to avoid further delays. Also, to notify all departments who might be affected by the delay. Adjust schedule accordingly.
• Assist the VFX Producer with the weekly client reports. Liaise with the VFX Producer to ensure the information contained within is accurate at all times.
• Arrange and/or attend senior VFX Supervisor reviews & Director reviews
• If required, communicate with external vendors for Stereo deliveries.
• Manage production team, ensuring roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. Mentor Production P.A’s.
• Request overtime as necessary for artists to hit their targets. Maintain oversight on the amount of overtime worked, ensuring overtime at all times is productive.
• If requested by VFX Producer, liaise with client to arrange reviews, meetings, conference calls, playlists, deliveries, discuss schedule etc.
• Forecast resources for the show using the Forecasting Spreadsheet if required by VFX Producer
• Track Actual Days vs Bid days on all stages of the pipeline

Needs to know and have

• 2+ years Sequence Management experience in VFX or 2+ years previous experience in VFX Production Management
• Proven scheduling experience with a knowledge of Shotgun
• Good knowledge of Excel
• Good communication skills – including interaction with show production team, department groups and supervisors
• Able to manage clients
• Organised and methodical in approach to work
• Calm and positive demeanor
• Clear in planning with artists, supervisors & clients.
• Capable of motivating and leading teams with enthusiasm
• Experience of onset work preferred

If this sounds like you we would love to hear from you.

Weta Digital is looking for an Experienced Motion Pipeline Developer to provide technical support, develop artist-facing tools and pipelines servicing the Animation, Motion Edit, Facial Motion, Crowd, and Previs departments.

Required:

• Strong experience with Maya and/or MotionBuilder
• Strong scripting abilities in python and mel for Maya
• Ability to communicate clearly with non-technical users
• Able to work well as part of a team
• Friendly and calm when under pressure
• Available to work evenings and weekends during busy times
• Collaborative development experience
• Comfortable with troubleshooting/enhancing/refactoring existing code
• Strong technical and creative problem solving skills
• Experience in visual effects, software or game development
• Ability to gather requirements and user feedback independently

Bonus:

• Experience working on a help-desk or as a tutor
• Experience with C++, QT, PyQt/PySide, JIRA, gitlab
• Experience with Nuance
• Experience with Massive
• Familiarity with unit/integration/regression/acceptance testing
• Proponent of clean code design patterns

Weta Digital is seeking a Department Trainer to join our FX Department.

We are looking for keen candidates who can offer the following skills:

• Is an expert in Houdini and Katana, with at least 5 years of production experience in FX for film.
• Generalist knowledge of Maya.
• Experience creating written documentation and video tutorials is a bonus.
• Must be an excellent communicator, both written and spoken.
• Interest in learning and teaching proprietary tools

extra credit: interest in solver technology and ability to describe in artist language

If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you !

Description

The Production Analyst is responsible for forecasting and monitoring financials for all projects to help ensure that all shows are delivered on time and budget. The successful applicant will have a good understanding of production forecasting and financial analysis methods, and will work closely with the Executive Producer, FX Producers and other production crew.

Primary Responsibilities

• Initially, the role will be focused on establishing financial systems and processes to ensure delivery of robust forecasts and reliable tracking of financial performance against budget.
• Delivery of financial analysis and reporting that provides insight into performance against budget
• The preparation of financial forecasts, including risk assessments and show spend scenarios.

Essential Skills

• Experience in establishing financial systems and processes
• Proven financial analyst experience including cost analysis, forecasting, and financial modelling
  
• Strong analytical skills and the ability to collect, integrate, and analyse large amounts of data into meaningful information that informs management decision making
• The good judgement and interpersonal skill to be able to use financial information to successfully influence key stakeholders
  
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• BCom Finance or similar
• Expert in Excel
• Proven background in effectively dealing with multiple stakeholders

Desirable skills

• VFX, film, or television industry experience, preferably in an accounting or financial analysis capacity
• Scenario modelling
• BS in Mathematics, Economics, or Computer Science
• Focused on continuing improvements to the organization

If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you!

Weta Digital is looking to hire a Department Production Manager to join our growing Production team. We are keen to talk to experienced production candidates who have a track record of scheduling and managing through to delivery, large volumes of work on complex VFX projects.

Job Description:

The Dept Production Manager is responsible for overseeing the entire schedule of a single project, or a substantial component of a single project within a department at Weta Digital.

Key Responsibilities:

• Managing either the entirety, or a significant proportion of a large show. Supporting the Dept manager with the planning of resource requirements, and ensuring a comprehensive schedule is built, maintained and tracked through to final delivery.
  
• Sharing responsibility for scheduled targets and working with both department production and show production to ensure the schedule is on track, ensuring that risks and changes are communicated clearly and in good time.
  
• Reporting on weekly progress, including Stacks (milestone) updates, passing on relevant client feedback and any other supporting information that would benefit the team.

Needs to know and have:

• Proven scheduling experience and knowledge of scheduling tools, ideally database knowledge, preferably Shotgun.
  
• Good knowledge of Excel & Word.
  
• Organised and able to multi-task, especially with regards to fielding queries from, and providing updates to multiple groups.
  
• Capable of motivating and leading teams with enthusiasm
  
• Able to troubleshoot & solve problems
  
• Calm and personable under pressure and when working to tight deadlines.
  
• Able to delegate effectively and provide mentoring to Production Coordinators & Assistants
  
• A minimum of 3+ years experience working in VFX production

If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you!

Weta Digital is looking to hire Production Coordinators to join our growing Production team.

Role - Responsible for coordinating all matters as required facilitating efficient running of the Show or Department.

Needs to Do

• Track shots/assets
• Schedule assets (In Department Production)
• Responsible for hitting scheduled targets
• Arrange dailies, rounds, meetings, create playlists, take notes and follow up on notes.
• Arrange and/or attend senior VFX Supervisor reviews & Director reviews (create playlists and take & notes)
• Manage artists.
• Request overtime as necessary for Artists to hit their targets.
• Order overtime food as required for Artists working overtime.
• Coordinate delivery & supporting documentation as required.
• If requested by VFX Producer or PM liaise with client to arrange reviews, meetings, conference calls, playlists etc.

Needs to Know

• Previous knowledge of VFX pipeline
• Minimum of 3 years experience in VFX or related field.
• Knowledge of Excel & Word.
• How to manage artists and clients
• Knowledge of scheduling tools, ideally database knowledge, preferably Shotgun.

Needs to Be

• Confident clear communicator
• Sharp & resilient
• Organized & uses initiative
• Ability to handle confidential information
• Comfortable dealing with all levels with the organization, including key executives & senior management
• Able to multitask
• Able to juggle various priorities in a fast paced environment
• Able to troubleshoot & solve problems
• Calm and personable under pressure and when working to tight deadlines.

If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you!

Wingnut AR looking for a mid to senior level QA tester to join our groundbreaking team of Augmented Reality artists and developers. You will be working at the forefront of technology and imagination in order to bring ingenious forms of entertainment to the world.

Key responsibilities:

• Create comprehensive test strategies and test cases.
• Identify and accurately report issues.
• Track issues root and regress bugs.
• Identify areas of improvement or concerns.
• Collaborate with Developers, Production to ensure that testing is efficiently and effectively covering all possible scenarios.
• Set up testing processes and standards.

Required skills:

• Sharp attention to detail, persistence, and patience.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Highly organized, responsible and self-motivated.
• Familiar with the use of JIRA or similar bug tracking database.
• Understanding of QA Methodologies, tools, and best practices.
• Experience working with Unreal Engine 4 and/or Unity.
• Experience working with Desktop Platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux).
• Experience working with Mobile Platforms (Android, iOS).
• Familiarity with CI, Automation, Revision Control, and scripting languages.
• Experience programming/scripting in a development or test engineering capacity.
• Have an understanding of game design and how games are created.

For any further queries about this role, please email Wingnut AR at hello@wingnutar.com

Weta Digital are often looking for Assistant Technical Directors (ATD’s) to work across a variety of departments. ATDs are responsible for providing support to the more senior TDs, Production, and other departments in all aspects of the Weta pipeline. Their focus is monitoring and ensuring render and data resources are used as efficiently as possible.

If you would like to apply for consideration for when the next opportunity arises, please see below for how to register your interest.

Needs To Do

• Assist in a multitude of departments throughout the VFX workflow as required.
• Assist senior TDs to maximise their productivity.
• Stay abreast of company technology and standards.
• Test and report back on new technology being developed within Weta's Research and Development groups.
• Advise Show and/or Department Production of the status of their workload and communicate with other departments as applicable

• Proactively troubleshoot render and pipeline issues within the facility

• Complete Renderwall Error Reports efficiently and proactively / follow up optimization suggestions
• Use company resources efficiently
• Always ensure their work is produced to the best of their ability.
• Follow guidelines to ensure the quality of their work meets the requirements of the recipient.
• Remains aware of the status of their assigned tasks and when elements will be ready

• Communicate technical issues that you cannot solve yourself with the ATD Supervisor in a simple and accurate manner

• Has a basic understanding of look development

• Has a basic understanding of pipeline Has a demonstrable basic understanding of the VFX workflow
• Has mid-level understanding of at least one specialised workflow within VFX
• Has a strong desire to improve their knowledge and skill base, both technically and artistically

• Stays pro-active and positive
• Must be able to work productively and inclusively in team environments.
• Must openly share their knowledge with their peers.

Must have:


• A good understanding of Maya
• Minimum one year work experience
• A show-reel demonstrating artistic talent and technical ability
• Passion for problem solving, VFX and Film making

Beneficial to have:

• Python or scripting skills

• Experience with Nuke and compositing practices
• Practical art experience

Candidates must be a New Zealand Citizen or New Zealand Permanent Resident. Applications close 31 May, 2018.

Wingnut AR are looking for a talented and experienced game designer to join our groundbreaking team of Augmented Reality artists and developers. You will be working at the forefront of technology and imagination in order to bring ingenious forms of entertainment to the world.

Key Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with the Creative Director to deliver on the creative vision for the project.
• Maintain all design aspects of a game-as-service through entire project life cycle.
• Balance game with consideration to fun gameplay, player acquisition, monetization and engagement.
• Communicate game design clearly and concisely with.
• Inspire game team through progressive, creative design.
• Provide and receive critique in a constructive manner with suggestions and solutions for improvement.
• Remain current on industry trends including: new game genres, new game design methods and emerging platforms.
• Research game industry and product design trends to enhance the players experience and enjoyment.
• Ensure the commercial success of our product offerings.

Required Skills and Experience:

• Excellent written and verbal communications skills.
• Extensive content and systems design experience. Ideally someone who has creatively owned complete implementations from concept to delivery.
• Efficient grasp on game industry standards, conventions, game concepts, mechanics.
• Able to work creatively in a demanding team environment.
• Absolute passion for playing and making computer games.

For any further queries about this role, please email Wingnut AR at hello@wingnutar.com

Wingnut AR are seeking a Senior Game Developer to join our groundbreaking Augmented Reality development team. You will be working closely with artists and truly pushing the limits of technology to bring new forms of entertainment to the world.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with designers, artists, and the other developers to ensure a great player experience.
• Design and develop key gameplay systems and features.
• Develop tools to enable artists and designers to iterate their content.
• Work closely with design, art and technical teams to understand, define requirements and build solutions.
• Collaborate with other developers to improve processes and practices.
• Be interested in learning new technologies and systems and leverage them in creative ways to meet our technical needs.
• Assess requirements and provide estimates to guide an evolving development plan.

Desired Skills & Experience:

• BSc Degree in a Computer Science/ Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• Experience shipping AAA games on multiple platforms.
• Experience using game engines such as Unreal or Unity.
• Experience integrating third party middleware into Unreal or Unity.
• Excellent software engineering skills, including the ability to design, implement, debug and optimize high quality realtime software.
• An excellent understanding of algorithms, data structures and 3D Math.
• Extensive knowledge of C++, and a good knowledge in at least one of Objective-C, C# or Python.
• A good general knowledge of all areas of real time interactive software development, including 3D graphics & 3D graphics APIs, physics & collisions systems, networking, audio, artificial intelligence, animation, game logic and user interfaces.
• Thrive in a fast-paced, innovative and creative environment.
• Need to be able to communicate clearly, work well in teams, and be able to work smartly, quickly and efficiently in time sensitive situations.
• Have a passion for everything Augmented Reality.

For any further queries about this role, please email Wingnut AR at hello@wingnutar.com

Weta Digital is seeking an experienced Katana developer for the Shots R&D department to help build and manage the lighting pipeline and workflows. The Shots R&D department provides production tools and work flows for the FX, Lighting, Comp and Matte Painting departments, and solutions that interconnect these departments with other groups in the company. The work requires creating innovative and robust production pipelines and workflow solutions for all rendering needs within Weta Digital.

This is a highly technical position, and would suit a candidate with well-developed technical skills and a genuine interest in problem solving. The role requires interaction with artists as well as software engineers and other pipeline groups within the facility. Therefore, effective communication skills and a willingness to work on multiple varied tasks are essential.

Most importantly, the candidate must be motivated and interested in the opportunity to learn new systems and concepts and be willing and able to adapt to the changing needs of feature film production. We are specifically looking for somebody with the ability to lead and guide a small team.

Required skills:

• Extensive experience of Katana and VFX lighting pipelines
• Extensive knowledge of C/C++ and Python development
• Experience with source control systems such as git
• Experience as an artist or TD in Lighting, FX or Compositing.
• Experience with VFX asset tracking systems
• Confident working in a Linux environment
• Ability to design, write, debug and share code within a team
• Strong interpersonal communication and teamwork skills
• Good time-management and problem-solving skills
• English language fluency

Preferred Skills:

• Experience with QT and UX design
• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering
• Team Lead experience

If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you!

Weta’s Technology and Research group is the innovation engine of Weta Digital. All large scale projects of the studio are powered by tools invented and developed by the group, and it is well-known how leadership in both the technology and research spaces is a key strategic objective for Weta Digital.

Weta Digital is looking for an experienced, visionary senior research scientist to help guide research and implementation of tools based on computer vision and machine learning (CVML) across our technology and research departments.

As part of our senior technology and research group, you will lead our research in the CVML space and lead a team of developers delivering high quality software in fast paced, challenging and creative environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead research into CVML-based tools and applications across the studio, in fields such as image synthesis, denoising, computer vision, motion analysis and synthesis as well as large scale data discovery, mining and analysis
• Be a key advisor in setting the direction for Weta’s strategy in the CVML space, in collaboration with the Senior Head of Technology and Research to align with the studio’s wider goals
• Work closely with the heads of our technology and research departments to share insight into mutually beneficial opportunities for new solutions, exercising a high level of creative thinking for leveraging CVML to build new, improved tools for the VFX process
• Collaborate with developers to design and ship applications and plugins to enhance the quality of the work of Weta’s artists, improve their focus on the task at hand and empowering them to achieve new levels of excellence in their field, by means of a pleasant, forceful personality and a charismatic communication style
• Seek and maintain long-term collaborations with leading research institution around the world, fostering a climate of collaboration between the industry and academia
• Stay up-to-date and contribute to the applied research in the CVML space, spanning both the theoretical and implementation sides. Apply new technologies in the development and enhancement of our products and processes, and develop a vision for new possibilities. Continuously raise the effectiveness of the team building skill and trust both inside and around it

Required skills and experience

The ideal candidate will have a number of publications in the field, corresponding to observable improvements in tooling similar to Weta’s areas of interest, such as image synthesis, denoising, computer vision, motion analysis and synthesis, data analysis and discovery. The ability to illustrate a vision and a complex set of ideas in a manner appropriate to the present audience will be a crucial asset to the successful candidate.

The candidate will also be able to demonstrate skill in leadership and mentoring roles, ideally involving teams of researcher and engineers or various degrees of seniority as well as project managers and interfacing with testing teams.

Another crucial asset to the successful applicant will be an ability to illustrate best practices of use of the proposed tools to artists and technical directors with a rich diversity of backgrounds, enhancing their understanding of the new possibilities offered by the proposed technology and stimulating a fruitful exchange of ideas with the target user base.

The candidate will also be able to demonstrate a high degree of competence in multi-threaded C++ development on Linux and its associate toolchain, as well as common libraries for CVML applications. It is understood the successful applicant may also be versant in other languages common in this space, such as Java, python or R and the associated library packages

Additional desirable skills

• Image synthesis and rendering
• Animation
• Physically based simulation
• Design of effective user interfaces, workflows and interaction stories for new tasks
• Requirement gathering and an ability to elicit expression of stated as well as latent needs from the target users
• Experience with real-time environments, high performance computing and GPU programming
• Experience working in a professional development team, including collaborations with project managers, tracking tooling such as Jira, regular reporting on progress and similar
• Familiarity with Linux-based environments
• Familiarity with common VFX pipeline tools such as Nuke or Maya and in general the VFX process

Qualifications and requirements

• PhD or Master’s degree and proven track record of excellence in research
• Proven track record of achieving significant results as demonstrated by grants, fellowships, patents, as well as first-authored publications at leading workshops or conferences such as CVPR, ECCV/ICCV, SIGGRAPH, NIPS
• Demonstrated software engineer experience via an internship, previous work experience, coding competitions, or widely used contributions in open source repositories (e.g. GitHub)
• Willing to work in Wellington, New Zealand

Weta Digital is seeking a Pipeline Developer to join the Look-Dev R&D department.

Our mission:

• To create and support all the tools used for Look Development within the company, including texturing, material authoring, shading surfacing, appearance modelling
  
• Conduct research in appearance-related problems, such as material models, material filtering, material measurement, texture creation, for the purposes of improving quatlity and efficiency of Look Development.

The ideal candidate will have extensive pipeline engineering experience within a production environment, as well as software engineering expertise. Internship and junior positions are also available for this role.

Responsibilities:

• Participate in code design and code reviews within the Look-Dev R&D department.
  
• Integrate and test new Look-Dev technology within a production pipeline.
  
• Provide support for Look-Dev tools to hundreds of production users.

Required Qualifications:

• 3+ years experience with Python, Qt and PyQt/PySide.
  
• Experience with programming against database interfaces and domain APIs.
  
• Good understanding of modern programming techniques and tools.
  
• Good problem solving skills.
  
• Ability to write practical and efficient production code.
  
• Ability to design, write, document, test, debug and share code within a team.
  
• Good communications skills and English language fluency.
  
• Comfortable talking to users and developers and understanding feature requests.

Desirable Qualifications:

• Experience with C/C++ programming.
  
• Experience with Maya scripting and programming.
  
• Masters-level degree in Computer Science or equivalent.

If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you!

The Rendering department at Weta Digital is seeking a Test Engineer to improve our automated testing infrastructure and procedures, which help us deliver highly robust software with continuous integration in a fast-paced production environment.
Additional responsibilities include working with rendering engineers to develop tests for new features, monitoring test reports, and helping to diagnose test failures. Familiarity with rendering and visual effects production is a plus, because taking initiative to improve test coverage is a key aspect of the role. For more senior candidates, we anticipate that this role might grow to encompass broader responsibilities, including coordination of integration testing across multiple departments.

Requirements

• 2+ years of experience as a test engineer for a large software project.
• 2+ years of Python development experience.
• Comprehensive knowledge of best practices in software testing.
• Hands-on experience with a variety of testing tools and frameworks.

Desirable experience and skills

• Experience in visual effects or animated feature production.
• A degree in computer science
• Software engineering experience in C/C++
• Comfortable working in a Linux development environment.
• Ability to work independently on a self-directed team in a customer-oriented production environment.

If this sounds like you - please get in touch, we would love to hear from you!

Are you interested in working with Weta’s large suite of custom software? Are you able to give clear direction and understand how intelligent constraints lead to innovative strategies? Have you experienced the joy of collaborative end-to-end development with customers? Our Software Engineering team is growing and we're looking for a curious software engineer to join our Core team. You will be working in a large development team on software that spans the entire studio.

Who you are:

• You have a strong suite of VFX software skills, specifically Maya, Renderman, Houdini or Katana plugins
• You have a passion for tools designed to improve workflows
• You help artists translate ideas into solutions
• You make tools that can handle large assets
• You are open-minded and team-focused

Requirements:

• Experience in the VFX industry, writing plugins for any of the following packages: Maya, Renderman, Houdini, Katana
• Expert C++ with complementary experience in Cuda and OpenGL
• 5+ years of applicable experience
• BS/MS in Computer Science or a related subject (or equivalent knowledge and experience)

Who we are:

The Software Engineering department is responsible for continuously improving the pipeline including: procedural modelling and dressing, realtime rendering, 2D imaging, animation and VR. If you value a balanced culture of individual autonomy and group collaboration, are creatively minded, and want to work with people who are passionate about technology and creating digital worlds - we'd love to meet you!

Production Engineering supports and builds software which helps our crew make movies. Our software includes small utilities, plugins for applications like Maya & MotionBuilder, and complex render & asset tracking systems. You will work directly with artists to understand their requirements and then write code which enables them to be more effective at their jobs.

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for supporting and improving the functions and efficiency of existing applications and systems, design and develop high-volume, low-latency applications for mission-critical systems, delivering high-availability and performance.
  
• Successful candidate will also provide advice to the Production Engineering Lead on architecture and structure of Production Engineering deliverables, and will be flexible, able to work with changing project priorities, and deliver quality work on time and to specification.

Requires:

• BS/MS degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related subject
  
• 5+ years of professional experience as a Java developer
  
• Proficient designing and developing applications using Java 8 and Spring
  
• Proficient with knowledge of relational databases (PostgreSQL)
  
• Understanding of Java and JVM internals (Classloading, Memory Management, Transaction management etc)
  
• Understanding of concurrency, object oriented analysis and design patterns
  
• Experience managing and troubleshooting servers and networks
  
• Experience in designing programming APIs utilised by expert to novice developers
  
• Experience with test-driven development

If this sounds like you – we would LOVE to hear from you!

We are currently taking VFX Producer expressions of interest for future opportunities in 2018.

Job Purpose: Responsible, alongside the VFX Supervisor, for strategising, implementing and managing targets and relationships specific to the VFX delivery of a feature film project. Responsible for managing project budget and overseeing the schedule and workflow of the Show Production team. This is a client facing role. Reports to the Executive Producer.

Needs to Do

Key Responsibilities:

• Bidding / Client Liaison / Project Delivery
  • Ensure all VFX show deliverables are determined, built into the contracted schedule and delivered on time
  • Liaise directly with the client to ensure work is progressing as per contracted
    
  • schedule and manage all change orders
    
  • Generate payment and key milestone schedules
  • Manage client expectations
• Budget
  
  • Manage the contracted VFX budget for a feature film project
  • Monitor overall Bid vs Actuals
• Reports
  • Provide weekly cost and schedule reports to Executive VFX Producer and Head of Production
• Tracking:
  • Track all turnovers, assets, shots, finals, editorial updates, marketing requests and change orders
• Internal Communications & Reporting
  • Manage internal communication between the VFX Supervisors, Leads, Heads of
    Departments and Show Production; and anticipate and communicate issues in order to resolve problems quickly
  • Maintain weekly internal client status reports
• Scheduling / Resource Management:
  • Maintain oversight of Production Manager’s schedule according to the scope of VFX work required on the show
  • Ensure scheduled targets are being hit; and, if not, troubleshoot and resolve any scheduling conflicts, issues or delays
  • Forecast resource requirements with the VFX Production Manager, VFX Supervisor and Resource Manager to plan an effective and efficient approach to completing the show within contractually agreed deadlines.
• Manage Show Production Team
  • Set up and maintain best-practice methodology typical of a television VFX pipeline; including client relations, internal communications, scheduling, budgeting, database maintenance, reporting and tracking.
• Above and Beyond:
  • Positive, upbeat and professional
    
  • Pro-active and solution-orientated

Needs to know and have

Essential Skills:

• Good flair for dealing with clients – knows the right tone and urgency without leading to misunderstandings
• Highly organised and detail-oriented; with first-class time/project management skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• The ability to remain calm and confident in a fast-paced environment
• Capable of motivating and leading teams on various projects with confidence and clarity
• Lateral thinking skills
• Proficient in production database tools e.g. Shotgun

Essential Experience:

• Proven experience with VFX workflows, pipelines and turnarounds
• A minimum of 2 years of experience at a VFX Line Producer level or in a similar senior production role at a VFX facility
• An in-depth understanding of live-action and CG based VFX workflows, pipeline and schedule
• Proven track record of client-facing project management and scheduling
• Responsible for the efficient running of a show through all departments within budget and to contracted deadlines.

Needs to:

• Bid the Show
  
• Forecast resources for the show using inhouse Forecasting Tools.
  
• Schedule & plan resource requirements with the Executive VFX Producer, VFX Supervisor & Head of Production
  
• Provide weekly cost and schedule reports to Executive VFX Producer and Head of Production
  
• Ensure the VFX team understands the goals and deadlines for assets, shots, sequences and any R&D projects required.
  
• Ensure scheduled targets are being met by troubleshooting and resolving any scheduling conflicts, issues or delays.
  
• Track turnovers and ensure we are tracking to contract and budget.
  
• Track editorial updates & changes ensuring the production database is current and aligned with change orders.
  
• Track client change orders and ensure the VFX team are aware of budget changes approved to progress.
  
• Ensure the production team is running efficiently by attending reviews, rounds & meetings.
  
• Arrange and/or attend senior VFX Supervisor reviews & Director reviews.
  
• Ensure artist schedules are being managed efficiently.
  
• Approve requested overtime as necessary. Ensure the Production team are managing the amount of overtime pre-approved.
  
• Approve artist timesheets and leave

Requirements are:

• A minimum of 5 years experience as a Producer in Feature Film VFX.
  
• Proven experience successfully Producing large projects within a facility.
  
• Onset experience preferred.
  
• Excellent knowledge of database systems (preferably Filemaker), Excel & Word.
  
• Proven experience managing artists and working with clients.
  
• Organized and methodical in approach to work.
  
• Clear planning with artists, supervisors & clients.
  
• Capable of motivating and leading teams with enthusiasm.
  
• Able to troubleshoot & solve problems.
  
• Calm and personable under pressure and when working to tight deadlines.

If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you!

We’re looking for an experienced project manager to join a highly technical R&D team. You will work with our head of department to create simulation tools to be used by our artists on upcoming films, implementing a programme of work that mixes blue sky research with tool development and support. Your growing team of 15 primarily work from our facility in Wellington, but include a few working remotely from locations around the world.

Ideally you’ll have experience managing research projects in the visual effects industry, but we are also interested in meeting people with other backgrounds. You'll have the ability to participate in discussions with a highly technical team and field technical requests from other departments around the facility.

Your project management style will be shaped by your experience running Agile projects, and you’ll be a pragmatic implementer, making sure that the methodology you define works for your team and customers. You can set expectations and manage shifting priorities with ease, while keeping everyone engaged and informed.

You'll be working with a talented team of researchers and software engineers to build industry-leading tools in a friendly and supportive environment.

Responsibilities

Work in partnership with the head of department and other stakeholders to;

• define, develop, execute and iterate a project management methodology appropriate for the department
• define, monitor and prioritise a programme of work for the department, aligned with the goals of the studio and the requirements of other departments. This programme of work may include inputs from internal stakeholders as well as from other departments
• regularly groom and re-prioritise backlogs
• monitor and manage scope, cost and time to deliver successful projects
• conduct project post-mortems for both internal and external review
• develop business cases for projects and drive them through the acceptance process
• regularly report on project progress, success & deviations to stakeholders as required
• monitor and maintain the wellbeing of the team
• facilitate performance reviews, providing leadership and mentoring as required
• work with other project managers to improve project management practices throughout the studio

Required Skills

• A flexible, pragmatic approach to project management
• Good understanding of software development methods
• Ability and willingness to quickly grasp complex technical issues
• Ability to provide leadership to teams
• Great communication and people skills

Desirable Skills

• Experience in VFX, film or video game production, or in computer graphics
• Experience in an Agile project management methodology
• A degree in Information Systems or similar, or qualifications in Project Management (such as Prince2, PMP)
• Familiarity with tools in use at Weta such as JIRA
• Software development experience

The Rendering department at Weta Digital is seeking a Senior Rendering Engineer who will work closely with CG supervisors to develop practical rendering solutions to challenges posed by complex visual effects shots. A thorough understanding of a wide range of rendering technologies is required, such as light transport, importance sampling, shading, etc. The ideal candidate will have extensive software engineering expertise, preferably in rendering or VFX pipeline tools, as well as hands-on experience in visual effects or animated feature production as a lighting or shading TD or in a similar role.

Responsibilities

• Develop new rendering technology to help deliver complex visual effects shots.
• Advise users on rendering strategies and best practices, and provide hands-on support and practical solutions in a fast-paced production environment.
• Forge relationships with CG supervisors and others to identify new rendering requirements and improve coordination between departments.
• Work with pipeline engineers to deploy new renderer functionality to end users.
• Analyze and optimize rendering bottlenecks and scalability issues arising in production.
• Implement new features with a focus on high performance, multi threading, scalability, and robustness.
• Improve and maintain existing code to improve quality, reliability, and maintainability.
• Find and fix bugs. Proactively test new and existing features to ensure the highest levels of quality.

Requirements:

• 3-5 years of industry software engineering experience in C++.
• 3-5 years of hands-on experience in visual effects or animated feature production as a lighting or shading TD or in a similar role.
• A thorough understanding of rendering technologies, including path tracing, shading, geometry processing, etc.
• Good familiarity with industry practices in building and rendering VFX shots.

Desirable qualifications and skills:

• A degree in Computer Science.
• Development experience on a production quality renderer.
• Experience developing plugins for various VFX systems (e.g. Katana, Maya, Houdini, Nuke)
• Python programming experience
• Comfortable in a Linux development environment.

Position Overview

Weta is looking for an accomplished Houdini developer to join a team exploring the application of procedural systems in the wider vfx pipeline. Applicants ought to have held similar positions within recognised vfx or game development facilities, creating solutions in Houdini or developing tools to aid that process. Applicants should demonstrate a broad interest and understanding of how artists and technicians work in a content pipeline, and how data and information flows between teams. Ideal candidates will bring production experience in the design, development and use of procedural systems to this role, and be willing to extend their knowledge to a wide set of domains and problem areas.

Responsibilities

The successful applicant will be expected to work well in a small collaborative multidisciplinary team environment, and be willing to contribute in areas outside of their immediate domain. Within the team it is expected that critique is both offered and taken on board at appropriate times, and that project deliverables are seen as a collective responsibility. The successful applicant is expected to be comfortable working with artists to explore problems, and be confident demonstrating the solutions they develop, within the team, department and broader Weta facility. The role sits within a flat hierarchy, reporting to the Project Lead and Project Manager as part of the Technology and Research group.

Required skills and experience

• Minimum 4+ years of relevant experience creating &/or supporting high-end visual effects or game development across similar roles.
• Expert Houdini user with a familiarity of other cg applications such as Maya, 3dsMax, ZBrush, Renderman.
• Significant experience developing with C++ and the Houdini HDK
• Experience using programming tools such as compilers, debuggers, and version control systems.
• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics or equivalent work experience. Self taught applicants welcome to apply.
• Experience using unix based operating systems such as Linux.
• Strong initiative and problem solving skills.
• Must have excellent communication and organizational skills.

Additional desirable skills

• Confident with content pipeline and software integration concepts.
• Familiar with the VFX Platform and the issues this sets out to address.
• Familiar with the concept, use and deployment of Houdini Engine.

If this sounds like you, please get in touch!

Weta Digital is taking expressions of interest for Creature TDs to join its award winning team for roles opening up later in 2018.

Applicants should be experienced and passionate about building photo-realistic creatures. They should have broad anatomical knowledge and be well versed in creation, rigging and simulation of skeletons, muscles, and skin.

A Creature TD is responsible for building, rigging and simulating the internal anatomy of a creature, in order to drive the final deformation of the skin. Also responsible for defining animation controls and rigging puppets to be used by animation and other departments.

Creature TDs work closely with various departments, especially modelling, animation, and shots. They work alongside the Creature Cloth/Hair TDs to deliver dynamic, realistic creatures.

Strong scripting and debugging skills are a must.

• 5 years or more as a full time senior creature TD on feature films
  
• Experience with skinning and deformation of photo realistic characters and/or creatures
  
• Poweruser in Maya
  
• Poweruser in Python scripting
  
• Linux experience
  
• Experience in Cloth and Hair simulation a plus
  
• Python, Perl, and C++ knowledge a plus.
  
• Must be able to work well in a team environment
  
• Must be willing to relocate to New Zealand

The Weta Digital Information Systems team designs, implements, manages and supports all tools used for production tracking across the entire facility. There are a few large mac applications written in Objective-C. The tools must support the complex nature of the VFX pipeline whilst also providing a performant and intuitive experience for all of our Users – 1200 across the entire facility. We are looking for an experienced mac developer with an Objective-C background to join the team.

We are looking for someone smart, with a passion for software engineering, communication tools, new technologies, and providing perfect solutions to happy customers. In return, you'll have the opportunity to work with talented software engineers providing industry-leading tools within the visual effects and film arena. You will work with passionate, dedicated visual effects artists and technicians in a company dedicated to innovation and excellence.

Key Skills & Qualities:

• Mac applications development experience
  
• Languages - Objective-C, C++, GLSL
  
• Frameworks - Cocoa, Carbon, Quartz, GCD, OpenGL
  
• Databases - CoreData, Mysql, sqlite
  
• Exceptional communication skills both written and oral
  
• Exceptional communication skills, solutions oriented, friendly and personable
  
• Time and priorities management aptitude
  
• Analytical disposition, proactive
  
• A natural problem solver

Nice to Have:

• Experience with graphics and video processing libraries and frameworks (OpenGL, OpenCL, CoreVideo, CoreMedia, CoreImage filters)
  
• UI experience
  
• Understanding of visual effects technologies, terminology or pipelines.
  
• iOS development experience
  
• Some Linux skills
  
• Performance profiling experience

Desirable Qualifications & Experience:

• BS/MS or equivalent knowledge and experience in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Engineering or equivalent
  
• At least 4 years prior experience in a similar development role

If this sounds like you - please get in touch, we would LOVE to hear from you!

Wingnut AR are seeking highly skilled CG Animators to join our groundbreaking team of Augmented Reality artists. You will be working at the forefront of technology and imagination in order to bring ingenious forms of entertainment to the world.

Responsibilities:

• Create high quality real-time and cinematic animation using hand keyed animation and motion capture data.
• Export, develop and test animation in game engines (primarily Unreal Engine).
• Collaborate with the other creatives, animators, artists and developers to solve problems and create high quality Augmented Reality content.
• Manage your time effectively to meet the production schedules whilst regularly communicating your progress to the team.
• Provide WIP animation clips for review and creative discussion. Take direction, be willing to address comments and make changes.
• Experiment with emerging technologies.

Essential Skills and Experience:

• 3+ years animation experience in feature films or game development.
• Strong grasp of the principles of motion, timing, anticipation, follow-through, squash and stretch, forward/inverse kinematics, and other facets of 2D & 3D animation.
• A demonstrated passion and ability in animating naturalistic creatures.
• A demonstrated passion and ability in animating character performance and lip sync.
• Thrive in a fast-paced, innovative and creative environment.
• Expert communicator and collaborates well with others.
• A love of learning and can take initiative to solve tough problems.
• Highly proficient in Maya.
• Assist production in other parts of the pipeline if needed.

Preferred Skills and Experience:

• Experience with rig building, weighting and setting up controls and interfaces for character animation.
• Experience with Game Development and tools, Unreal Engine / Unity Game Engine.
• Passionate about what is next in Animation across all visual entertainment.

Submission Requirements:

• Showreel - A well presented showreel of your best work. A breakdown must be included with the reel.
• CV - Including a cover letter explaining why you want to work in the AR industry and what you can bring to our company beyond your skill set. Please include professional work experience and current references.

For any further queries about this role, please email Wingnut AR at hello@wingnutar.com

Do you have a keen vision for data flow, intuitive API design, and clear UX? Are you motivated to use big-picture insight as a platform for top-quality code? In your visual effects or gaming career have you experienced the difference end-to-end thinking makes?

Production Engineering is responsible for continuously improving how Weta Digital's artists collaborate to create movies. If you have a robust suite of VFX software skills and a passion for seamless, intelligent design of multi-faceted tools and pipelines, we have the challenges and environment for you to thrive! Multi-tier servers with multi-language APIs; desktop GUIs; full-stack web; application integration; image transformation and interaction are some of our specialities.

We seek a collaborative, clever thinker with the following skills:

• Top-grade, expert-level Python, with complementary experience in C++, Java, or Go
• Skilled GUI development in Qt or the web (particularly AngularJS)
• Command of database interaction (particularly PostgreSQL and Elasticsearch)
• Basic understanding of Maya, Houdini, Nuke, Katana, or Shotgun
• Comfortable working in Linux
• Delight in a fast paced, constantly evolving workplace

If this sounds like you – we would LOVE to hear from you!

Production Engineering is responsible for the development of libraries and supporting tools which facilitate the creation and manipulation of scene data. This involves high-performance, in-memory scene representations for real- time and offline rendering, and interactive non-destructive manipulation. We embed this functionality in 3rd party applications as well as exposing it via C++ and Python APIs.

The idea applicant will have ...

• 5+ years of professional experience as a C++ developer
• Expertise with APIs such as Boost, STL, Qt, CLANG, Unreal or Unity
• Expertise with multi-threaded development and performance optimization
• Experience writing performance sensitive APIs for use by other developers
• Interest in topics like C++ implementations, compilers, and memory allocation strategies

Either of the below would be advantageous ...

• Experience in the VFX or gaming industry
• Experience with application APIs such as Maya, MotionBuilder and Houdini

If this sounds like you – we would LOVE to hear from you!

Weta Digital is seeking a Researcher to join the Look-Dev R&D department.

Our mission:

• To create and support all the tools used for Look Development within the company, including texturing, material authoring, shading surfacing, appearance modelling
  
• Conduct research in appearance-related problems, such as material models, material filtering, material measurement, texture creation, for the purposes of improving quality and efficiency of Look Development.

The ideal candidate will have proven research contributions in computer graphics, as well as software engineering experience. Internship and junior positions are also available for this role.

Responsibilities:

• Survey and monitor the existing state of the art and of the competition.
  
• Participate in the research of new and practical solutions for Look Development problems.
  
• Participate in the dissemination of scientific knowledge within and outside the company.
  
• Participate in the implementation of new ideas into practical production tools.

Required Qualifications:

• Graduate-level (MSc or PhD) education or equivalent experience.
  
• Good knowledge of computer graphics research (material models, light transport, geometry processing, etc).
  
• Fundamental understanding of the scientific process.
  
• Ability to read, understand, and discuss scientific papers.
  
• Ability to think creatively and formalize when faced with a problem.
  
• Ability to understand the practical considerations of research applied to a production environment.
  
• Good communication skills and English language fluency.

Desirable Qualifications:

• Previous experience in computer graphics research in the VFX industry
  
• Good software engineering skills.
  
• Proficiency in C++ and Python.

If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you!

Weta Digital is accepting Senior FX TD and Experienced FXTD expressions of interest for opportunities opening up in 2018 - - If you would like to apply for consideration, please see below for how to register your interest.

Candidates should display the following:
• 5 years or more experience as a senior FX artist on Feature Films.
• Significant experience with fluid dynamics or destruction software for visual effects.
• Can deliver solutions for demanding FX problems proactively and independently, and provide support where needed.
• Leadership experience.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills.
• A strong eye for dynamic and directed motion.
• A strong eye for composition, light, and colour.
• Poweruser in Maya, Houdini, and or other FX simulation software.
• Linux proficiency.
• Scripting proficiency.

Also valued:
• experience with water simulation
• experience with destruction techniques
• Strong lighting and rendering skills.
• Shader writing skills.
• Code writing experience.

If this sounds like you - we would love to hear from you!

Weta Digital is hiring Pipeline TDs for the Shots R&D department to help build production pipeline tools and workflows within the FX domain. The Shots R&D department provides production tools and work flows for the FX, Lighting, Comp and Matte Painting departments, and solutions that interconnect these departments with other groups in the company.

This is a highly technical position, and would suit a candidate with well developed technical skills and a genuine interest in problem solving. The role requires interaction with artists as well as software engineers and other pipeline groups within the facility. Therefore good communication skills and a willingness to work on multiple varied tasks are essential.

Most importantly, the candidate must be motivated and interested in the opportunity to learn new systems and concepts and be willing and able to adapt to the changing needs of feature film production.

Required skills

• Creating innovative and robust production pipeline development and workflow solutions.
• Degree in Computer Graphics, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics or equivalent work experience.
• Extensive knowledge of Python, broad experience with other programming languages a plus.
• Experience working in an FX department or directly with FX artists.
• Experience with source control systems such as SVN/git
• Knowledge of and experience using Linux environment
• Experience with simulation software for visual effects.
• Strong interpersonal communication and teamwork skills.
• Strong time management skills.
• Strong problem solving skills.

Preferred Skills

• Previous experience as an FX artist.
• Team leadership experience.
• Experience with QT and UX design.
• Experience with Maya and Houdini APIs
• Strong technical understanding of shading, lighting and rendering.

If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you!

Weta Digital is accepting Expressions of Interest for Shader TD roles.

Candidates will ideally have at least 3 years of feature film experience and display the following attributes:

Essential skills:

• Experience in shading and look developing for photo-realistic feature films.
  
• Strong LookDev skills (both artistically and technically), with an excellent understanding of physically based shading & rendering.
  
• Ability to come up with creative, efficient rendering solutions for a wide variety of assets
  
• Ability to manage multiple assets at the same time, and put them seamlessly together in a visually coherent solution
  
• Familiarity with Maya and Linux.
  
• Experience with all aspects of the rendering pipeline.
  
• Strong communication, task management and organisational skills.
  
• Ability to implement both technical and artistic solutions in order to efficiently handle complexity

Preferential skills:

• Experience leading teams or small groups of artists
  
• Knowledge of Python scripting
  
• Shader writing experience

Within the Shaders Department at Weta, the work we undertake requires areas of specialised experience and focus; for example Environments, Materials, Characters & FX. Whilst we are looking for people with capabilities in all areas, we're also very interested in talking to Artists who have specific experience in one or more of these areas.

The Rendering Research Group at Weta Digital is seeking a Rendering Researcher to take a leading role in the development of rendering technology at Weta Digital. A deep understanding of a wide range of rendering technologies is required, such as light transport, importance sampling, volume rendering, realistic material models, shading, and geometry processing. The ideal candidate will have extensive software engineering expertise, proven research contributions, and project leadership experience.

Responsibilities

• Research and develop new rendering algorithms, such as light transport (path tracing with importance sampling), volume rendering, etc.
  
• Design and implement physically realistic material models for hair, skin, and other materials using multi-layer BSDFs, importance sampling, and subsurface scattering.
  
• Adapt the latest research results into practical, production-quality code.
  
• Implement core rendering systems with a focus on high performance, multi threading, scalability, and robustness.
  
• Analyse and optimize system performance.
  
• Improve and maintain existing code to improve quality, reliability, and maintainability.
  
• Proactively test new and existing features to ensure the highest levels of quality.
  
• Provide hands-on user support. Find and fix bugs. Author high quality internal and end-user documentation.
  
• Share senior project leadership responsibilities, such as planning and tracking development tasks, engaging with users, and collaborating with other departments.

Required Qualifications

• Masters or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related field
  
• 3+ years of relevant software engineering experience.
  
• World-class rendering research expertise.
  
• A solid foundation in software engineering, including object-oriented programming.
  
• Fluency in C++ and experience with other languages such as Python.
  
• Extensive experience in performance analysis and optimization of highly parallel, scalable systems.
  
• Ability to work well on a self-directed team in a rapidly changing, deadline-oriented environment.
  
• A team-oriented, customer-focused mindset.

Desirable Qualifications

• Extensive research and/or experience in either volumetrics rendering or materials
  
• GPU programming expertise (CUDA or OpenCL) and experience with interactive rendering algorithms.
  
• Experience in film or video game production.
  
• Familiarity with Linux and programming tools such as Valgrind, Vtune, git, and so on

About Weta Digital

Weta Digital is an Academy Award winning visual effects company based in Wellington, New Zealand that created the visual effects for movies such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong, Avatar, The Adventures of Tintin, The Hobbit trilogy, and many others. The studio has won 5 Academy Awards for best achievement in Visual Effects, and continues to show industry leadership by starting or incubating multiple successful software products such as Manuka, Massive, Mudbox and Mari.

If this sounds like you