Software Engineer, Tools Hydra/Visualization (Core)

Job ID R-03990 Location Emeryville, California, United States Business Pixar Animation Studios Date posted Jun. 04, 2025

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Job Summary:

Are you interested in advancing Pixar’s in-house and open-source filmmaking software? Our Software R&D department is looking for a motivated and skilled engineer to help develop the studio’s interactive rendering architecture. We work closely with both artists and engineers to build innovative filmmaking tools that enable our film production and continuously extend artistic reach. As a Software Engineer on the GPU team, you will work on hardware-accelerated preview rendering in our content creation tools, delivering fast and high quality visualization of huge film assets, or the high performance data processing pipeline we use to prepare scenes for rendering. This codebase has been open sourced as the OpenUSD Hydra component, and you’ll support and collaborate with a rich community in the film and graphics industries to extend the project in exciting new directions!

What you’ll do

Develop, test, and support high performance 3D graphics software, using C++ mainly in a Linux environment
Take ownership of challenging problems that arise from evolving the architecture of software that is heavily exercised in an active production environment
Collaborate with artists and other engineers to provide innovative technical solutions to artistic challenges
Design flexible and performant APIs that enable our software to perform well and scale to highly complex film production workflows
Help advance Pixar’s open-source initiatives like Hydra, OpenUSD (Universal Scene Description) and OpenSubdiv, as well as in-house content creation and pipeline tools

What you offer

Strong understanding of C++ that you continually expand upon
Familiarity with the math of computer graphics, and understanding of GPU APIs (e.g. OpenGL/Vulkan) and graphics pipelines
Experience with, or excitement to learn about, our core technical areas: modern rendering architectures for rasterization and ray tracing, data structures and algorithms, and multithreading. Ability to understand algorithmic runtime and memory tradeoffs
Passion for setting a high bar for code quality by writing robust, maintainable, well-documented and well-tested code
Love of the whole development cycle: From proposal and planning, to implementation, testing, optimization and deployment
Eagerness for continuous learning; willing to branch out into new technical areas, pick up new tricks, and revisit assumptions in areas of strength
Creative problem solving skills, with attention to detail, and a desire to discover and address root causes
You listen well and communicate clearly and succinctly

For more information about our open-source graphics technologies visit graphics.pixar.com.

The hiring range for this position in Emeryville is $145,265.00 to $187,990.00 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.

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About Pixar Animation Studios:

Pixar Animation Studios, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is an Academy Award®-winning film studio with world-renoinswned technical, creative and production capabilities in the art of computer animation. The Northern California studio has created some of the most successful and beloved animated films of all time, including “Toy Story,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Cars,” “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” “WALL•E,” “Up,” “Toy Story 3,” “Brave,” “Inside Out,” and “Coco.” Its movies have won 35 Academy Awards® and have grossed more than $13 billion at the worldwide box office to date.

About The Walt Disney Company:

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise that includes three core business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Experiences. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

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

Pixar Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, military or veteran status, medical condition, genetic information or disability, or any other basis prohibited by federal, state or local law. Disney champions a business environment where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a constantly evolving world.

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