Senior VFX Network Architect for Render Farms

Socket.dev; United States; Remote; USD 83,000 - 138,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

1099 contract

Job summary

Thea Energy seeks a Senior VFX Network Engineer contractor to manage a high-bandwidth, low-latency infrastructure for render farms and real-time artist collaboration. You will design spine-leaf networks, optimize NFS/SMB storage, and enable multi-cloud rendering pipelines across Linux/Windows environments.

Responsibilities include deploying Deadline Cloud Submitter, per-show environment loaders, and batch asset transfers, while maintaining low latency for OpenGL-based tools and ensuring thorough

Qualifications

• Engineering-level knowledge of Maya, Arnold, Mudbox, Unreal, Nuke, Shotgrid, Sync Sketch, and Adobe Creative Cloud.
• Extensive experience configuring VFX pipelines (Linux/Windows) including render farm deployment.
• 5+ years of Linux/macOS/Windows sysadmin with networking and scripting.
• Bash and Python scripting proficiency.
• Experience with enterprise hardware, cloud computing, and servers.
• Strong understanding of storage and networking (NFS/NAS) used by CG pipelines.
• Familiarity with Arnold or other CPU/GPU renderers and AWS Deadline.

Responsibilities

• Research and implement networking strategies to optimize the VFX CG visualization team.
• Define architecture with VFX and Corporate Technology teams.
• Configure and validate Deadline Cloud Submitter end-to-end for renders.
• Ensure Maya/Arnold scenes submit, render, and return output across show environments.
• Build an internal 3D asset transfer system for batch assets and renders.
• Collaborate to optimize VFX configs for low latency in OpenGL apps.
• Enable Linux shell-based system to launch apps with show env vars.
• Reduce stuck frames and crashing renders on the farm.
• Document systems and procedures.

Skills

Python scripting

Bash scripting

Linux administration

Networking

Render farm management

Tools

Maya

Arnold (MtoA)

Mudbox

Unreal

Nuke

Shotgrid

Sync Sketch

Adobe Creative Cloud

Job description

Thea Energy seeks a Senior VFX Network Engineer contractor to manage a high-bandwidth, low-latency infrastructure for render farms and real-time artist collaboration. You will design spine-leaf networks, optimize NFS/SMB storage, and enable multi-cloud rendering pipelines across Linux/Windows environments.

Responsibilities include deploying Deadline Cloud Submitter, per-show environment loaders, and batch asset transfers, while maintaining low latency for OpenGL-based tools and ensuring thorough