Flying Bark Productions is a dynamic and innovative animation studio dedicated to pushing the boundaries of character animation and storytelling. We have a number of exciting productions underway, including a new 2D project with Disney, Netflix's Ghostbusters animated series and Stranger Things animated series, as well as an upcoming feature film, Zac Power.
We are seeking a Render Technical Director (Render TD) to serve as the bridge between creative departments (Lighting, Surfacing, FX) and our render infrastructure. In this role, you will audit, profile, and optimize high-density production scenes to maximize image quality while minimizing compute cost.
You will diagnose complex frame failures, fine-tune samplings, and collaborate with technical leads and creatives to balance production quality and render efficiency.
Key Responsibilities:
- Scene & Asset Auditing: Inspect high-density production scenes to verify geometry (subdivisions, instancing), textures (tiled/mipmapped formats, memory footprint), shading networks, and scene graph traversal efficiency before farm dispatch.
- Troubleshooting & Technical Support: Serve as the frontline defense for diagnosing and resolving complex render failures across Surfacing, FX, and Lighting—including shading errors, memory limits/crashes, render locks, and visual artifacts (e.g., fireflies, temporal noise, aliasing).
- Optimization & Sampling Fine-Tuning: Analyze shot setups and adjust sampling, ray depths, and light thresholds tailored to specific asset, sets and sequences, to achieve target frame budgets.
- Performance Profiling & Systems Diagnostics: Profile scenes for CPU resource utilization, I/O bandwidth, and memory consumption. Utilize engine logs, diagnostics, and profilers to isolate performance bottlenecks.
- Tool Development & Automation: Build, refine, and maintain internal department tools and scripts using Python and Lua to streamline render pass setups, custom AOVs, secondary outputs, and automated denoising workflows.
- Ray Tracing & Shading Customization (Good to have): Leverage a deep understanding of light transport, sampling distributions, and ray-tracing algorithms to write or modify custom shaders (OSL, C++) and manipulate ray behavior for specialized production needs.
Technical Qualifications & Experience
Production Experience: 6 years of experience in feature animation or visual effects acting as a Render TD, Lighting TD, or Pipeline TD.
Core Render Engines: Deep operational knowledge of modern production ray-tracers (e.g. Renderman, Arnold or Karma).
Software Suite: Proficiency in DCC platforms including Katana and Nuke. Strong familiarity with scene graph structures.
Profiling & Debugging: Hands-on experience reading render logs, identifying memory leaks/spikes, or debuggers (Native DCC engine profilers).
Underlying Fundamentals: Solid foundation in computer graphics principles—including Monte Carlo sampling, BVH acceleration, color management (ACES/OCIO), and system resource limits (RAM/VRAM/IOPS).
Bonus / Desired Skills:
- Experience with volumetric shaders, or utility nodes in OSL or C++.
- Familiarity with queue management platforms such as Pixar Tractor.
- Academic background in Computer Science, Computer Graphics, Physics, or Mathematics.
What do we do?
Flying Bark Productions is a renowned independent producer of family-focused animation entertainment. For over 50 years, our 2D and 3D production facility has created award-winning feature films and TV series.
Why work with us?
- We work on some pretty cool projects - check out our website:
https://www.flyingbark.com.au/ - We have an industry leading studio space in Alexandria, complete with a cinema, quiet room, Zen Garden, games room, and state of the art animation facilities.
- We have cake days, movie nights, wrap parties & a culture club dedicated to coordinating our busy social calendar!
- The Barkers have big hearts too, with our Paws for a Cause fundraising arm raising much needed funds for charities such as Beyond Blue, RSPCA and the Cancer Council.
- We love dogs and you will often see some of our regular fluffy companions in the studio.
- Career development is important to us so we offer training and support opportunities whenever possible.
- Our employees say our culture is the best they've ever experienced - everyone is welcome and celebrated!
- You'll have access to mental health resources and free counselling via our Employee Assistance Provider, Support Act.
Perks & Benefits:
- We have a hybrid approach to work with flexible work from home days on offer.
- Enjoy holistic wellbeing support through discounted health insurance with Bupa, financial wellbeing initiatives from our superannuation partner Media Super, and access to staff qualified in Mental Health First Aid.
- Breakfast is served daily - on us!
- Flare Benefits Platform:
Access to exclusive discounts, cashback, and premium deals at hundreds of major Australian retailers to help your pay go further. - Health Insurance Discounts:
Compare and save on private health cover with potential savings of up to $300. - Novated Leasing (Flare Cars):
Eligible employees can save an average of $10,000/year on car ownership through novated leasing.*
*Available to permanent employees and fixed-term contractors on contracts of 12 months or more.
Flying Bark Productions is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.
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