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Senior Houdini Technical Artist, SideFX
Location: Toronto, Ontario; Los Angeles, California
Note: Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, in order to keep all of our employees and candidates safe, SideFX is hiring and onboarding remotely.
We are seeking an exceptional individual to join our talented Technical Consulting Team, reporting to the Technical Consulting Manager.
As a Senior Houdini Technical Artist (Games) your main role is to develop workflows and create tools with Houdini that enable a broad community of artists to create game content procedurally. You are a Houdini advocate, communicating Houdini’s value and features to our games customers. As an experienced game industry professional with strong and well-rounded Houdini skills, you are comfortable with on-the-spot troubleshooting. You are an excellent listener who takes the time to understand what our users hope to achieve and helps them reach their goals.
With strong communication skills, you love to share your knowledge with others and are comfortable presenting in a variety of media, both online and in person. We continue to expand rapidly into game development studios worldwide and would like you to bring your expertise to the thousands of artists who use our technology.
As part of the Technical Consulting Team, you will also work closely with R&D, Sales, Marketing and Education. You can expect occasional travel, sometimes internationally whether, for example, to visit customers or attend professional events.
Key Duties and Responsibilities*
Identify, develop, test, document and deploy tools and workflows (mostly via SideFX Labs) that solve real production problems for our customers at games studios.
Explore and prototype experimental workflows and share the results with our R&D team
Learn existing tools and workflows in Houdini
Communicate with customers both in person and on-line in meetings, webinars, live streams, and the like
Support our Sales Team as needed by providing specialized knowledge to further relationships with both prospective and existing customers
Report on industry trends and relay customer feedback to internal teams as appropriate. Keep track of your interactions and make notes available to others at SideFX
Be a champion of our company and represent SideFX to the larger game community
Participate as needed in public channels where Houdini tools are discussed
Occasionally visit games studios and provide guidance on applying Houdini to production challenges, answering questions and solving technical problems on site
Occasionally create demo content to be shown at various trade shows and Houdini related events
From time to time conduct training for customers
Collaborate on materials to assist sales team in communicating with games customers
Other duties as assigned
*Adjustments will be made to enable duties & responsibilities to be met working remotely considering the current Covid-19 pandemic situation.
Required Skills and Experience
Minimum of 6 years experience game industry, or related industry experience
Minimum of 3 years Houdini experience with demonstrated competency in a production setting
Fluency in using Houdini for a runtime context, preferably game production
Knowledge of the game development pipeline and related tools, including demonstrated
proficiency with Unity or UE4Must have great interaction skills and the ability to connect with others in person and online
Strong presentation skills, must be able to create and present content in Houdini fluently
Must be willing and able to travel occasionally (~25-35 days per year), sometimes internationally
Ability to work and operate remotely
Able to articulate an understanding of the business side of development, and the challenges faced by developers in an evolving landscape
A demonstrated passion for procedural processes and tools, and a drive to share that passion with artists
Strong written and verbal English communication skills
Bonus Skills
Realtime character experience strongly preferred
