Senior VFX Network Architect for Render Farms (Contract)

Thea Energy; United States; On-site; USD 83,000 - 165,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

1099 contract

Job summary

Thea Energy is seeking a Senior VFX Network Engineer contractor to design and operate high-bandwidth, ultra-low latency networks for render farms and real-time artist collaboration. You will oversee spine-leaf architectures, fast storage routing, and multi-cloud rendering pipelines to support complex CG productions.

Responsibilities include defining architecture with VFX and Corporate Technology teams, validating the Deadline Cloud Submitter end-to-end, and ensuring low-latency OpenGL workflows

Qualifications

• Engineering-level knowledge of standard CG and compositing applications, incl. Maya, Arnold, Mudbox, Unreal, Nuke, Shotgrid, Sync Sketch, and Adobe CC.
• Extensive experience with network configuration for VFX pipelines (Linux and Windows).
• 5+ years Linux/macOS/Windows system administration, incl. networking and scripting.
• Scripting in Bash and Python.
• Experience with enterprise hardware: workstations, render farms, storage, cloud computing, and servers.
• Strong understanding of storage and networking (NFS, NAS, file systems).
• Familiarity with 3D rendering workflows (Arnold, CPU/GPU renderers, AWS Deadline).
• Experience with remote working solutions (HP Z Remote, HP Anyware/Teradici).
• Knowledge of DCC app architecture and UI toolkits (Qt/PySide).
• Experience optimizing render pipeline needs for VFX Supervisors and CG Supervisors.

Responsibilities

• Research and implement networking strategies to optimize the VFX CG Visualization Team's workflow.
• Partner with VFX and Corporate Technology to define architecture.
• Configure and validate the Deadline Cloud Submitter end-to-end: queue setup and render node config.
• Ensure Maya/Arnold scenes submit, render, and return output correctly across the farm.
• Build internal 3D asset transfer system for batch assets between desktops and VMs.
• Collaborate to minimize latency in OpenGL-dependent DCC apps across desktop/VM/remote.
• Enable a Linux shell-based system to launch apps with show environment variables.
• Reduce stuck frames and crashing render jobs from the render farm.
• Document systems and procedures.

Skills

Python

Bash scripting

Maya

Arnold

Nuke

Linux admin

Windows admin

Deadline

Git

Networking

Tools

Deadline Cloud

AWS Deadline Cloud

Job description

Thea Energy is seeking a Senior VFX Network Engineer contractor to design and operate high-bandwidth, ultra-low latency networks for render farms and real-time artist collaboration. You will oversee spine-leaf architectures, fast storage routing, and multi-cloud rendering pipelines to support complex CG productions.

Responsibilities include defining architecture with VFX and Corporate Technology teams, validating the Deadline Cloud Submitter end-to-end, and ensuring low-latency OpenGL workflows