Senior Pipeline Developer - Open Digital Asset (ODA)

Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Department: Development

Sony Pictures Imageworks is located on the unceded traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. We are committed to respecting traditional lands, and working with communities towards reconciliation.

Sony Pictures Imageworks Canada Inc.

658 Homer Street., Suite 405, Vancouver, BC, V6B 2R4

Language in work environment - English

Benefits per company policy: include healthcare, tuition reimbursement, RRSP's, Sick and Vacation leave, standard increases as applicable

Role overview:

We’re looking for a Senior Pipeline Developer to help design, build and implement the Open Digital Asset (ODA) platform — a framework for exchanging standardized, high-fidelity 3D assets across studios and pipelines.  

The ODA mission is to drastically reduce technical barriers and complexity in sharing 3D assets across the Sony Entertainment landscape, thereby unlocking creative collaboration and transmedia production opportunities. Following from an initial prototype and then establishing a low-friction asset exchange across Sony Entertainment, the program aims to promote adoption further across the wider industry. The Open Digital Asset project is built on the belief that harnessing universal standards for interchange and collaboration in digital media is instrumental for the industry as a whole.

Working under our Principal Engineer, you’ll get hands-on experience with complex production assets, help turn exploratory prototypes into robust tooling, and collaborate closely with engineers, and creative stakeholders across animation, VFX, and games.

This role sits at the intersection of USD architecture, real-world studio pipelines, and open standards. If you enjoy solving messy interoperability problems, care deeply about the benefit of standards, and want your work to make an impact on the industry at large, then this role is for you.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Design, implement, and refine USD-based tooling for packaging, validating, transforming, and exchanging production assets
• Work directly with real production data (characters, props, environments) to ensure solutions hold up at scale and under real constraints
• Develop Python APIs and command-line tools that translate studio-specific asset representations into standardized ODA packages — and back again
• Help evolve ODA’s prim-hierarchy–centric approach, including variant preservation, LOD handling, and layer reduction strategies
• Design and implement metadata frameworks for digital assets using semantic web technologies (e.g. RDF, JSON-LD, schemas, etc), supporting asset identity, provenance, validation, and cross-pipeline interoperability.  You will also collaborate on developer-facing APIs and lightweight web tooling where appropriate.
• Collaborate with pipeline teams and architects to integrate ODA concepts into existing studio workflows without disruption
• Contribute to technical documentation, specifications, and reference examples that make complex systems understandable and adoptable
• Participate in design discussions around asset identity, provenance, versioning, and round-trip workflows between studios and in and out of content creation platforms and engines
• Contribute to the evolution of ODA as an emerging open-source standard

Required Technical Experience & Skills:

• Extensive experience in VFX, animation, or games production, ideally 4 - 6+ years 
• Strong communication skills and comfort working across engineering and creative teams
• Strong working knowledge of USD (scene graphs, composition arcs, variants, layers, kinds, payloads, purposes, etc.)
• Advanced Python development skills, including building maintainable libraries and CLI tools
• Ability to conduct design discussions, code reviews and quality analysis
• Hands-on experience with real production assets (characters, sets, materials, textures, LODs)
• Working knowledge of web and data modeling technologies such as JSON, JSON-LD, RDF, RESTful APIs, or schema-based systems, with some understanding of how structured data, identifiers, and metadata models support interoperability, validation, and large-scale asset systems.
• Strong experience working in Linux-based environments, including command-line proficiency, shell scripting, environment configuration, and debugging within production pipeline infrastructure
• Deep understanding of DCC-centric pipelines (e.g. Maya, Houdini) and how USD fits into them
• Experience working with asset management concepts such as versioning, references, packaging, and interchange
• Comfort reading, debugging, and restructuring complex USD assets
• Ability to reason about both technical correctness and artist usability

Preferred skills:

• A Degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience in VFX, animation, or games production
• Experience designing or enforcing asset standards, schemas, or pipeline conventions
• Familiarity with MaterialX, USDShade, texture pipelines, and color management
• Experience with validation frameworks, schema-based checks, or automated QA for assets
• Exposure to cross-studio or cross-vendor asset exchange workflows
• Background in large-scale pipeline refactors or greenfield pipeline/tooling initiatives
• Interest in open standards and contributing to shared industry solutions (AOUSD, ASWF, etc.)

The anticipated base salary for this position is $104,200 - 150,000/yr CAD. Benefits are per company policy: which include healthcare, tuition reimbursement, RRSP's, Sick and Vacation leave, standard increases as applicable. The actual base salary offered will depend on a variety of factors, including without limitation, the qualifications of the individual applicant for the position, years of relevant experience, level of education attained, certifications or other professional licenses held, and if applicable, the location of the position.

We value unique perspectives, and want diverse, unique talent to work with us.  We encourage candidates from all identities to apply.

*Sony Pictures Entertainment is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other protected characteristics.