Apply now

First seen by our source: just now

Staff Software Engineer - USD Authoring

@ Walt Disney Animation Studios

Vancouver, British Columbia

Full-time
Apply now
SIGNALS

Requirements summary:

  • Key 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
Source and dates

Source type not verified · apify-linkedin

Employer posting date
Not provided
First seen by our source
2026-11-15
Source record updated
2026-11-15

These dates describe the source record, not a live verification that the employer is still hiring. Check the original posting.

Walt Disney Animation Studios

FieldValue
Open jobs on Jobsy2
Job description
At Walt Disney Animation Studios we have a deep commitment to the philosophy that creativity inspires technology, and technology inspires creativity. Engineers in our Production Technology department are charged with developing and implementing new algorithms to solve unique and challenging problems for all of our animated content. We do this working alongside a user base that shares a collaborative environment with us, and uses the code we develop to make our feature films.

We are looking for an engineer to join our Production Technology team, targeting software development in multiple domains, from core libraries to user interfaces. In this role, you will be a part of a team of cross-site developers who partner closely with artists, production and technology leadership, technical directors, cross-team software engineers, and other technologists and researchers across Walt Disney Studios. You will be leading efforts related to designing and implementing innovative workflows and state of the art solutions motivated by our new long-term vision for Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Projects Include

  • Designing and implementing core infrastructure to manage our shot, environment, and asset definitions and structures
  • Building new APIs to allow for artist-facing and data management tools to more readily access shot content
  • Supporting our productions by identifying and solving technical obstacles encountered by our artists
  • Extending and improving the core libraries used for end-user tool creation
  • Creating new user interfaces and tools for artists and technical directors to author, edit, access, and inspect shot and asset content
  • Adopting new external DCC’s and integrating them into our pipeline
  • Writing new tools and plugins into 3rd party apps for rough to fine story development
  • Devising artist dashboards for consolidating and managing tasks, encouraging collaboration and visibility into the characters, environments, story and the overall film making process

What does it mean to be a developer here at WDAS?

  • Our engineers get the opportunity to work on the full stack of our tools, from developing the underlying algorithms through building intuitive artist-friendly interfaces.
  • Work hand in hand with artists to make the tools we need for the incredibly complex and rich characters and environments featured in our movies.
  • Develop on top of a highly performant, extendable in-house application framework.
  • Develop new artist-centric interaction models using the latest hardware and technologies.

Key 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

Bonus Qualifications

  • Understanding of computer graphics foundational concepts, and algorithms
  • Knowledge of animation, graphics techniques and algorithms
  • Experience building clean interfaces using modern UI development toolkits such as Qt
  • Experience leading cross-functional technical initiatives, aligning engineering efforts with broader organizational, production, or business priorities.
  • Ability to mentor and develop engineers through technical guidance, knowledge sharing, career coaching, and fostering a collaborative team environment.
  • Strong mathematical fundamentals, including linear algebra and numerical methods
  • Strong understanding of coding process, standards, continuous integration and testing principles
  • Masters in Computer Science

The hiring range for this position in British Columbia, Canada is C$143,100 to C$191,950 per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate’s geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A full range of medical, financial, and/or other variable pay or benefits, may be offered dependent on the level and position offered.

Disclaimer

This position is with Walt Disney Animation Studios Vancouver Inc., which is part of a business we call Walt Disney Animation Studios.

To learn more about Disney's guidelines on the use of AI for candidates, click here.

Having technical issues? View the FAQs for help.

Similar jobs

  • Staff Software Engineer, Platform

    Vancouver, BC
    $137k–$182k/yrHybridFull Time

    Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies

    Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies needs candidates with significant production backend experience, strong depth in Go, and proven distributed system and API design skills. Strong leadership, mentorship and operational judgment are also required.

    Leadership, API development, Incident response, Customer experience, Collaboration, Go

  • Staff Software Engineer - Builder Platform

    Vancouver, BC +2
    RemoteFull Time

    Temporal Technologies: Temporal develops and distributes the world's leading open source durable execution system.

    Candidates need strong software engineering fundamentals and a record of leading production internal platforms or developer tooling. They should be proficient in a language such as Go, TypeScript, Python or Java, and experienced with agentic coding tools and workflow automation.

    Codex, Claude Code, GitHub, Temporal

    Senior Staff Software Engineer - Builder Platform

    Vancouver, BC +2
    RemoteFull Time

    Temporal Technologies: Temporal develops and distributes the world's leading open source durable execution system.

    Candidates need strong software engineering skills and a record of leading major platform projects across several teams. They should be proficient in languages such as Go, TypeScript, Python or Java, and have experience building internal platforms and influencing leaders across the business.

    Temporal, GitHub, Codex, Claude Code

  • Staff Software Engineer - Identity & Access Management

    Vancouver, BC

    Brex

    Candidates need strong software engineering fundamentals, experience with reliable production backend systems, and experience leading complex projects. Working knowledge of IAM concepts such as OAuth, SAML, OIDC, MFA, SSO and RBAC is required.

    Okta, Oso

  • Staff Software Engineer, Motion Planning

    Toronto, ON +1
    RemoteFull Time

    AeroVect: The Airport Automation Company

    5+ YOECandidates need a Bachelor's or Master's degree in a technical field and extensive hands-on experience building planning modules for autonomous systems deployed in real operations. Strong C++ or Python skills, Linux experience and the ability to independently drive ambiguous technical problems to solid solutions are required.

    ROS, ROS2, Linux

  • Staff Software Engineer, Teleoperation

    Vancouver, BC
    On-siteFull Time

    Sanctuary AI

    Candidates need a track record of shipping production robotics software, strong C++ and Python skills, and Linux, Git and CI/CD experience. Robotics knowledge such as ROS 2, kinematics and teleoperation, plus a master's or Ph.D. or equivalent industry experience, is expected.

    ROS 2, Git, Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, OpenXR

  • Staff Software Engineer - Fullstack

    Vancouver, BC

    Databricks: Databricks is the Data and AI company.

    10+ YOECandidates need 10+ years of experience with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, plus 10+ years of server-side web development. They also need SQL, cloud and container experience, and experience building large-scale distributed systems.

    Docker, Kubernetes

    Staff Software Engineer - Backend

    Vancouver, BC

    Databricks: Databricks is the Data and AI company.

    8+ YOECandidates need 8+ years of software engineering experience, including running large-scale distributed systems in production. They need strong programming skills in Java, Scala, C++ or Go, cloud and container experience, and the ability to influence technical direction.

    Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, GCP

Locations & environments

Locations

All of CanadaRemote · Hybrid · On-site · Field

Pro tip: add remote jobs to widen your search.

Exclude locations

Workplace type

Company jobs in these results

These are this company’s jobs loaded in your current search. The company may have more openings.