CG Technology Supervisor

SideFX; Toronto; On-site; CAD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

SideFX in Toronto seeks an exceptional CG Tech Supervisor to align R&D priorities with Houdini’s roadmap and customer needs. You bridge engineers and artists, guiding workflows and ensuring high-quality user experiences.

You will influence prioritization, prototype new ideas, and stay current with industry advances, representing the company at events when needed in a full-time role with a dynamic team.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of production experience at a senior level, preferably in film.
• Strong working knowledge of Houdini and its procedural workflows.
• Deep domain expertise in the specific area assigned to you (e.g., animation, lighting, rendering, etc.).
• Proven ability to influence priorities and align cross-functional stakeholders without formal authority.
• Experience giving structured feedback to engineering teams on tools used in production.
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity and defining process and priority where needed.
• Ability to work well independently and in a nimble team environment.
• Knowledge of Python programming and software development skills.

Responsibilities

• Propose, scope, and validate new frameworks, features, and workflows with emphasis on pipeline viability and user experience.
• Collaborate with developers to uphold priorities, balancing relevance, usability, and resources.
• Monitor development progress and communicate status to R&D and other teams.
• Maintain a consistent approach to workflows and best practices across Houdini's feature set.
• Serve as the tie-breaker on user-facing aspects when consensus cannot be reached.
• Meet with clients and industry stakeholders to gather feedback and validate plans.
• Stay current with industry breakthroughs and prototype new ideas for the domain.
• Occasionally represent the company at marketing or industry events.

Skills

Houdini knowledge

Python programming

Stakeholder influence

Independent worker

Ambiguity handling

Production experience

Tools

Houdini

Python

Job description

Position Overview

SideFX is seeking an exceptional CG Tech Supervisor with an eye for establishing priorities, identifying connections, and dependencies across our development processes and feature roadmap to join our Toronto based R&D team.

As a member of the SideFX Research and Development group, you will have the opportunity to work alongside some of the brightest minds in the CG industry and interact with an outstanding artist community. We see this full time position as a career-defining opportunity in which to grow professionally and contribute to Houdini and its user community. As a CG Tech Supervisor, you will be right at the heart of a constantly evolving synergy between technology and art.

Our R&D team has received many prestigious industry awards, including four Technical Achievement Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an Academy Award of Merit (Oscar), a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award from NATAS, and four back-to-back Editor's Choice Innovation Awards from CG World Magazine. Movies using our toolset have received the Oscar for Best Visual Effects every year in the past two decades. We share a passion for innovation in computer graphics and a drive for excellence in game tool development and procedural animation. Providing digital artists with the most advanced tools for their craft is, and has always been, our single focus.

Coming from a production background, you know firsthand where pipelines break down and where priorities get lost between teams. You act as the critical link that unifies the R&D teams in your domain, Houdini's roadmap, and the customers' needs. As CG Tech Supervisor, you complement the developers' contributions while holding formal authority over the user-experience aspects of project specification, completeness and prioritization.

Whether you are research-oriented or development-oriented, we have a great number of exciting projects to choose from. You will have ample opportunity to grow professionally and make significant contributions to the success of our products.

What you will be working on

• Propose, scope, and validate new frameworks, features, and workflows in collaboration with developers, technical directors, and other internal teams, ensuring they meet the demands of CG production with an emphasis on pipeline viability, performance, and an exceptional user experience.
• Collaborate with developers to clarify and uphold priorities for your area of responsibility, balancing relevance, feature completeness, usability, technical feasibility and available resources.
• Monitor development progress in your area of responsibility and communicate status to R&D and other teams as needed.
• Help maintain and enforce a consistent approach to workflows, features, and best practices across Houdini's evolving feature set. Identify and map bottlenecks and dependencies before they become blockers.
• After thoughtful consideration and due diligence, serve as the tie-breaker on the user-facing aspects of the project you are associated with when R&D consensus cannot be reached.
• Meet with clients and other industry stakeholders to gather feedback and validate product plans, frameworks, and features.
• Stay current with academic and industry breakthroughs, independently research and prototype new ideas, and inform R&D and the broader company on emerging technology areas relevant to your domain.
• Occasionally represent the company at marketing or industry events.
• Other duties as assigned.

What you need to be succesful

• 5+ years of production experience at a senior level, preferably in film.
• Strong working knowledge of Houdini, including its procedural workflows and how artists and TDs use it day to day in production.
• Deep domain expertise in the specific area assigned to you (e.g., animation, motion editing, image processing, sequencing/editorial, lighting, rendering, compositing).
• Proven ability to influence priorities and align cross-functional stakeholders without formal authority over their work.
• Experience giving structured feedback to engineering teams on tools you've used in real production work.
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity i.e. defining process and priority where one or both were previously lacking.
• Ability to work well independently and in a nimble team environment.
• Knowledge of Python programming and software development skills (C++ not required).

Bonus Skills

• Production experience as a CG Supervisor or VFX Supervisor.
• Familiarity with Houdini's underlying architecture (C++, Qt, Python UI/UX layers), sufficient to have informed technical conversations with engineers.
• Public speaking or client-facing experience (conferences, user groups, client workshops).