Senior 3D Pipeline Developer (Houdini)
About Barnstorm
Barnstorm is an Emmy and VES-nominated visual effects studio based in Los Angeles and operations in Vancouver, Montreal, NYC, Atlanta, and London. We provide photo-realistic visual effects for a variety of episodic and select sequences in feature films. We pride ourselves in our artists’ talent and dedication to producing world-class visual effects.
Who You Are
We're looking for a highly skilled engineer with deep experience building and maintaining pipelines in Houdini and Maya, with a particular focus on automation, templating, and scene assembly. The ideal candidate is someone who thinks in systems and gets excited about removing manual steps from artist workflows, whether that means procedural scene builders, template driven shot setups, or tooling that assembles complex scenes from upstream publishes automatically. This position reports directly to the Head of Pipeline.
What You’ll Do
- Develop and maintain 3D workflows in Maya and Houdini, with a strong emphasis on Houdini based automation, scene assembly systems, and template driven pipelines that let artists start from a working scene rather than building from scratch.
- Design and build tooling that automates the construction of shots and sequences, including procedural scene assembly, asset wrangling, and reusable Houdini templates and HDAs that scale across projects.
- Ensure seamless integration with other software tools and APIs, including USD as a backbone for asset interchange and scene composition.
- Collaborate with stakeholders at all levels (owners, supervisors, and artists) to keep everyone aligned on ongoing projects, priorities, and issues.
- Develop custom tools for Houdini in Python (C++ is a plus), with a focus on workflow automation and artist facing tooling that reduces repetitive setup work. Maya is a plus.
- Optimize pipeline performance and stability, addressing performance, security, and scalability issues as they come up.
- Maintain and troubleshoot pipeline tools and workflows, providing support and guidance to artists and technical directors.
- Mentor junior pipeline developers, supporting their technical growth and professional development.
- Stay current on industry trends and emerging technologies, proposing and implementing improvements to the pipeline.
What You Bring
- Strong proficiency in Houdini, with a deep understanding of how they fit together in a production pipeline. Maya is a plus.
- Demonstrated experience building automation tooling in Houdini, including HDAs, procedural scene assembly, template systems, and tools that programmatically build or update scenes from published assets.
- Experience integrating with software APIs across the VFX stack, including Nuke, Arnold, Redshift, Deadline, and ShotGrid.
- Solid grasp of software development best practices, including agile methodologies, code optimization, and refactoring.
- Familiarity with cloud rendering pipelines for VFX.
- Excellent problem solving skills and a strong understanding of VFX production workflows.
- Experience with remote work and collaboration tools such as Slack, Bitbucket, and Jira.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
- Ability to prioritize and manage multiple tasks in a fast paced production environment.
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or Four years of experience in VFX as a pipeline developer or technical director.
About This Role
This role is open to Canadian based talent. Candidates must be legally authorized to work in their country of residence and be willing to work on-site/hybrid as required by production and studio location.
Barnstorm VFX is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive team that provides a meaningful work environment free of discrimination and harassment. We seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. Indigenous people, people of color, people of all genders or non-genders, and people with disabilities of all types are encouraged to apply.