Job Description

Flying Bark Productions is a dynamic and innovative animation studio dedicated to pushing the boundaries of character animation and storytelling. We are working on exciting projects such as Avatar: The Last Airbender feature film, Netflix's Ghostbusters animated series and Stranger Things animated series, as well as our production Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan.

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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.

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Key Responsibilities

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- 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.
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- 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).
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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Technical Qualifications & Experience

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Production Experience: 6 years of experience in feature animation or visual effects acting as a Render TD, Lighting TD, or Pipeline TD.

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Core Render Engines: Deep operational knowledge of modern production ray-tracers (e.g. Renderman, Arnold or Karma).

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Software Suite: Proficiency in DCC platforms including Katana and Nuke. Strong familiarity with scene graph structures.

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Profiling & Debugging: Hands-on experience reading render logs, identifying memory leaks/spikes, or debuggers (Native DCC engine profilers).

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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).

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Bonus / Desired Skills

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- Experience with volumetric shaders, or utility nodes in OSL or C++.
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- Familiarity with queue management platforms such as Pixar Tractor.
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- Academic background in Computer Science, Computer Graphics, Physics, or Mathematics.
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What do we do?

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Flying Bark Productions is a renowned independent producer of family-focused animation entertainment. For over 50 years, our 2D and 3D production facility hascreated award-winning feature films and TV series.

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Why work with us?

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- We work on some pretty cool projects - check out our website: https://www.flyingbark.com.au/
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- 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.
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- Breakfast is served daily - on us!
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- We have cake days, movie nights, wrap parties & a culture club dedicated to coordinating our busy social calendar!
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- 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.
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- We love dogs and you will often see some of our regular fluffy companions in the studio.
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- We have a hybrid approach to work with adaptable work from home days on offer.
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- Career development is important to us so we offer training and support opportunities whenever possible.
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- Our employees say our culture is the best they've ever experienced - everyone is welcome and celebrated!
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- You'll have access to mental health resources and free counselling via our Employee Assistance Provider, Support Act.
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- 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.
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Flying Bark Productions is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.

📌 Render Technical Director (New South Wales)
🏢 Flyingbark
📍 New South Wales