Pipeline Technical Director - Digital Matte Painting, Lighting, Rendering, and Compositing

At Stellar, we aim to build a studio where people actually want to work. We face production's inevitable ups and downs as a supportive, truly connected team, prioritizing open communication over anyone working in isolation. We value honesty, creativity, and looking out for one another.

The Opportunity:

We are staffing up for a new Marvel Studios streaming series, and we are looking for a highly specialized DMP LRC Pipeline TD (Digital Matte Painting, Lighting, Rendering, and Compositing Pipeline Technical Director).

Because Digital Matte Painting and Lighting Rendering Compositing sit tightly packed at the very end of the 3D production chain, we need a brilliant TD who can bridge environment art with final image generation. In this role, your heavy focus will be on data handoffs, optimization, and seamless integration between creative applications. If you love building incredible software tools, and saving artists from technical headaches, you are exactly who we are looking for.

In this role, success looks like:

Tool Development and Integrations

• Write custom tools, APIs, and user interfaces using Python to speed up artist tasks, automate render setups, and manage look development files.
• Collaborate with pipeline peers to improve and maintain pipeline for handing-off assets, caches from applications like Maya, or Houdini into lighting environments, and finally into compositing software like Nuke.

Debugging and Optimization

• Optimize lighting and comp scenes to create efficient and light-weight renders, and integrate best practices into the pipeline.
• Act as the front line technical support for our lighting and compositing artists! You will troubleshoot broken render layers, camera projection bugs, unoptimized texture memory allocations, and render bugs.
• Create and maintain documentation of new tools, workflows, and optimizations.

The Requirements

Must Haves:

• Experience: 3 plus years of experience in a Pipeline TD role focusing heavily on Lighting, Compositing, or Environments.
• Programming and UI: Mastery of Python and solid experience building graphic tools, using PyQt or web-based toolkits.
• Software APIs: Deep knowledge and hands on production experience with Nuke, Maya or Houdini APIs.
• Render Engines: Familiarity with heavy production renderers like Arnold, RenderMan.
• Core Practices: A strong grasp of color science, camera projections, data packaging.
• Eligibility: You must be legally eligible to work in Canada.

Nice to Haves:

• A strong understanding of Linux based operating systems.
• Knowledge of lighting tools like Katana or Gaffer.
• Experience in Version Control Systems, such as Git.
• Working knowledge of Flow Production Tracking (formerly ShotGrid).
• Industry data standards like Universal Scene Description (USD).
• A keen artistic eye to help you intuitively understand what the lighting and compositing teams are trying to achieve visually when you build their tools.

Why Join Stellar?

• Comprehensive Benefits: Extended health, dental, and vision coverage.
• Culture: A collaborative, ego free environment where your technical wizardry and problem solving skills are truly valued.
• Compensation: The salary range for this specialized TD position is between $95,000 and $100,000 CAD per year, based on your level of experience

At Stellar Creative Lab, we believe diversity and inclusion are key to creativity and collaboration. We’re committed to building a supportive, open, and diverse community where everyone can thrive. We're always looking for ways to improve accessibility, so feel free to share any feedback or suggestions with us.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply, though priority will be given to BC Residents, Canadians and Canadian Permanent Residents.