Senior VFX Network Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Investigate and implement networking strategies aimed at enhancing the creative vision of the VFX CG Visualization Team.

• Collaborate with VFX and Corporate Technology teams to establish architectural frameworks.

• Set up and verify the Deadline Cloud Submitter from start to finish, including queue configuration and render node setup.

• Ensure that Maya/Arnold scenes are submitted, rendered, and produce accurate outputs across various show environment-based jobs.

• Develop an internal 3D asset transfer system for batch asset files, scene directories, and batch render files between desktops and virtual machines.

• Enhance VFX configurations to achieve low latency in OpenGL-dependent DCC applications across desktops, VMs, and remote desktop environments.

• Activate a Linux shell-based system for launching applications with show environment variables, such as Maya/Arnold, and automate render farm settings specific to each show.

• Diagnose issues related to stuck frames and failing render jobs.

• Build and manage the VFX Asset/Render network, storage, render farm, servers, and VM workstations.

• Create and implement a per-show .env/environment-loader system that distinguishes between machine-level and show-level configurations.

• Guarantee deployment to additional artist machines as the team expands.

• Document systems, architectures, procedures, and workflows.

⛳️ Requirements

• Advanced engineering knowledge of standard CG and compositing applications, such as Maya, Arnold, Mudbox, Unreal, Nuke, Shotgrid (and/or Sync Sketch), and Adobe Creative Cloud.

• Significant experience in network configuration for VFX pipelines (Linux and Windows), particularly in optimizing networks and deploying render farms for CG assets, look development, and rendering pipelines.

• Over 5 years of experience in system administration across Linux, macOS, and Windows, including networking and scripting.

• Proven expertise in scripting with Bash and Python.

• Experience in configuring and maintaining enterprise-scale hardware, including workstations, render farms, enterprise storage, cloud computing, and servers.

• Strong grasp of storage and networking, including NFS, NAS storage clusters, and CG Asset/Rendering file systems.

• Familiarity with 3D rendering workflows, including Arnold or other CPU and GPU renderers, render farms, and AWS Deadline.

• Experience with remote working solutions, such as HP Z Remote and HP Anyware/Teradici.

• Working knowledge of standard DCC application architecture and related UI toolkits (Qt/PySide).

• Experience in optimizing and fulfilling the network asset/render pipeline requirements of VFX Supervisors and CG Supervisors.

• Strong proficiency in Python; comfortable with reading/writing Maya userSetup.py-style scripts and addressing MEL/Python callback timing issues.

• Hands-on experience with Arnold (MtoA) render device setup and troubleshooting.

• Direct experience with a render farm/queue management system — Deadline is strongly preferred (specifically AWS Deadline Cloud is a plus).

• Familiarity with per-show/per-project pipeline environment patterns, such as .env sourcing, Rez, or other studio-standard methods.

• Experience with Git/source version control systems.

• Familiarity with Unix/Linux; comfortable operating within a Windows artist workstation environment.

• Understanding of networking and data-transfer performance, including the ability to identify bottlenecks in asset/render data flow and suggest enhancements.

• Strong documentation practices.

• Experience with Entra ID/Intune-managed Windows endpoints or a willingness to operate within that framework.

• Experience in creating artist-facing tools and plugins for DCC applications like Maya, Arnold, Mudbox, Shotgrid, Houdini, and Nuke.

• Familiarity with ACES OCIO workflows utilizing LUT systems and media encoding/transcoding tools such as ffmpeg and AVI.

• Experience with Docker and/or AWS.

🏝️ Benefits

• Hourly compensation on a 1099 contract basis, commensurate with experience and location.