Staff Software Engineer, Production Tools & Dashboards

The Walt Disney Company; Burbank (CA); On-site; USD 156,000 - 209,000; Full time

Job summary

The Walt Disney Animation Studios seeks a veteran developer to join our Production Technology team in California. You will own the full stack of in-house tools—from core algorithms to artist-friendly interfaces—while collaborating with artists to craft robust pipelines used across feature productions.

Qualified candidates have deep C++ and Python expertise, strong USD/Qt experience, and a track record of leading tool development and API design in cross-disciplinary teams.

Qualifications

• Strong experience with C++ (including x11/x14) or equivalent experience.
• Strong experience with Python or equivalent experience.
• Strong experience with USD (Universal Scene Description).
• Strong experience with Qt (for desktop development) or equivalent experience.
• 7+ years experience designing and developing interactive tools, with 3+ years in senior technical roles designing core infrastructure.
• Partner with Technology leadership to establish architectural vision for key new frameworks including data models, GUI toolkits, and underlying core libraries and evaluation engines.
• Extensive experience designing APIs from scratch as well as designing APIs that extend existing frameworks.
• Ability to collaborate with team members across different disciplines including directly interfacing with stakeholders to understand requirements.
• Experience guiding cross disciplinary teams of engineers over open ended technical problem domains.
• Demonstrated ability to lead development from architectural design to implementation, and through adoption, helping build adoptions plans and strategies with incremental integration milestones through a collaboration with key stakeholders.
• Exemplary communication, teamwork and problem solving skills, balancing the timeliness of solutions with their sustainability. Able to collaborate with team and leadership to prioritize competing demands based on business value.
• BS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field

Responsibilities

• Design and implement core infrastructure to support shot, environment, and asset definitions and structures.
• Build APIs to enable artist-facing and data management tools to access shot content.
• Support productions by solving technical obstacles for artists.
• Extend and improve core libraries used for end-user tool creation.
• Create new user interfaces and tools for artists and technical directors to author and inspect content.
• Adopt new external DCCs and integrate them into our pipeline.
• Write tools/plugins into 3rd party apps for story development.
• Develop dashboards for consolidating and managing tasks and collaboration.

Skills

C++

Python

USD

Qt

7+ years experience

Education

BS in CS/CE/EE

Tools

Qt toolkit

Job description

The Walt Disney Animation Studios seeks a veteran developer to join our Production Technology team in California. You will own the full stack of in-house tools—from core algorithms to artist-friendly interfaces—while collaborating with artists to craft robust pipelines used across feature productions.

Qualified candidates have deep C++ and Python expertise, strong USD/Qt experience, and a track record of leading tool development and API design in cross-disciplinary teams.