Senior Staff Production Engineer, Platform - ILM London

Company Overview

Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), founded in 1975 by George Lucas, has a rich history of creating iconic moments in motion picture history including films like Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, and The Avengers earning 34 Academy Scientific and Technical Achievement Awards for its innovations. The Platform Team, part of the ILM's Core Pipeline Department, develops critical tools and systems that support thousands of digital artists across five global studios in creating stunning, state-of-the-art visuals. 

Position Summary

We are seeking an exceptional Senior Staff Production Engineer with deep Linux systems knowledge and experience to architect and develop the core of our VFX production pipeline. You will tackle exciting challenges in the HPC space such as task scheduling on large scale hybrid compute farms, acceleration of petabyte-scale file systems across multiple global studios, and other critical areas. By crafting and deploying essential services for our engineering teams, you'll play a pivotal role in shaping the technological foundation of our award-winning company.

Responsibilities:

• Spearhead the development of major, strategic services and tools with company-wide impact

• Take the initiative to design, architect, and implement systems from high-level business needs, leading or collaborating with a team of engineers as required

• Provide expert guidance and support to engineers across all teams, resolving service issues and enhancing existing services

• Serve as a knowledge resource for production tools and services, offering training and assistance to engineers and artists

• Build an in-depth understanding of industry trends to drive discussions around future service and tool development

Qualifications:

• BSc or advanced degree in computer science or related field, or similar experience

• Expertise in C/C++ systems development on a Unix/Linux platform

• Extensive experience with the Linux operating system

• Strong Python development skills

• Experience with relational or NoSQL databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch etc.)

• Proven ability to create scalable, fault-tolerant, and reliable distributed systems

• Experience developing robust, efficient tools and services

• Working knowledge of storage clusters, network and file system protocols, operating systems

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with FUSE

• RESTful API design and development experience

• Expertise in asynchronous service development

• Familiarity with message queuing systems (RabbitMQ, Kafka)

• Knowledge of service discovery systems and distributed key/value stores (Consul, etcd, ZooKeeper)

• Windows development experience a plus

General Expectations:

• Passion for delivering meticulous, high-quality work

• Positive, can-do attitude with the ability to ask for help when needed

• Clear and concise communication skills

• Effective listening and problem-solving abilities

• Excellent time management and prioritization skills

• Innovative and creative thinking

• Adaptability and flexibility in a fast-paced environment

• Inspiring and motivating leadership qualities

ILM strives to be an inclusive environment, and the Core Pipeline Group in particular embraces promising individuals with a variety backgrounds and experiences.  For us a good idea is a good idea, regardless of where it comes from.  

Do you thrive in a creative environment? Do you enjoy sharing knowledge and learning from others? If you love images and movies, then this might be the role you’re looking for.  Join us and make your mark on the future of visual effects!

This role is Hybrid, which means the employee will be required to work a minimum of 2 days on-site per week at a Company designated location, and occasionally from home.

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