Contract - Senior VFX Network Engineer

About Thea Energy: Thea Energy is leveraging recent breakthroughs in stellarator physics and engineering to create a faster and simpler approach to commercializing fusion energy. The company is reinventing the stellarator using computer-controlled arrays of planar coils thereby replacing the intricate, complex modular magnets required in all other stellarator architectures. Thea Energy is on a mission to create a limitless source of zero emission energy for a sustainable future. Position Overview:

Thea Energy is looking for a Senior VFX Network Engineer contractor with experience working in the Visual Effects industry to manage high-bandwidth, ultra-low latency infrastructure tailored for render farms, large data transfers, and real-time artist collaboration. Key skills include spine-leaf architecture, high-speed storage routing (NFS/SMB), and multi-cloud rendering pipelines.

Key Responsibility Areas:

• Research and implement innovative networking strategies that help to optimize the creative vision of the VFX CG Visualization Team.

• Partner with VFX and Corporate Technology teams to define architecture.

• Configure and validate the Deadline Cloud Submitter end-to-end: queue setup, render node configuration.

• Confirm Maya/Arnold scenes submit, render, and return output correctly through the farm on multiple show environment-based jobs, outlined by the CG Asset / Rendering Pipeline.

• Build an internal 3D asset transfer system for transferring batch asset file and scenes directories, and batch render files between desktops and virtual machines.

• Work with VFX and Corporate Technology groups to optimize VFX configurations, ensuring low latency in OpenGL dependent DCC applications for both desktop, VM, and remote desktop applications.

• Work with VFX and Corporate Technology groups to enable a Linux shell-based system for launching applications coded with show environment variables such as Maya / Arnold, automating the render farm settings (set on per show-code basis).

• Alleviate stuck frames and or crashing render jobs from the render farm.

• Ensure proper documentation of systems and procedures.

Requirements:

• Engineering-level knowledge of standard CG and compositing applications, including Maya, Arnold, Mudbox, Unreal, Nuke, Shotgrid, (and or Sync Sketch), and Adobe Creative Cloud.
• Extensive experience working on the network configuration for VFX pipelines (Linux and Windows). Specifically, servicing the network optimization and render farm setup deployment for CG asset, look development, and render pipeline.
• 5+ years of Linux, macOS, and Windows system administration experience, including networking and scripting.
• Demonstrable knowledge of scripting with Bash and Python.
• Experience with configuring and maintaining enterprise-scale hardware: workstations, render farms, enterprise storage, cloud computing, and servers.
• Strong understanding of storage and networking, including NFS, NAS storage clusters, as well as maintaining the CG Asset / Rendering file systems.
• Familiarity with 3D rendering workflows, including Arnold or other CPU and GPU renderers, render farms, and AWS Deadline.
• Experience with remote working solutions, including HP Z Remote, and HP Anyware / Teradici.
• Working knowledge of standard DCC application architecture and related UI toolkits (Qt/PySide)
• Experience optimizing and implementing the network asset / render pipeline needs of VFX Supervisors and CG Supervisors.

Per-show environment pipeline (primary deliverable):

• Work with VFX and Corporate Technology management to develop and maintain the operation of the VFX Asset / Render network, storage, render farm, servers, and VM workstations.
• Design and build a per-show .env / environment-loader system that separates machine-level config from show-level config.
• Ensure it's deployable to additional artist machines if/when the team grows.
• Document architecture and workflows.

Required Skills:

• Strong Python expertise; comfortable reading/writing Maya userSetup.py-style scripts and MEL/Python callback timing issues.
• Hands-on experience with Arnold (MtoA) render device configuration and troubleshooting.
• Direct experience with a render farm/queue manager — Deadline strongly preferred (AWS Deadline Cloud specifically is a plus).
• Familiarity with per-show/per-project pipeline environment patterns (e.g., .env sourcing, Rez, or equivalent studio-standard approaches).
• Experience working with a source version control system (git) — pipeline scripts and configs should be under version control.
• Unix/Linux familiarity; comfortable working against a Windows artist workstation environment.
• General understanding of networking and data-transfer performance — able to identify bottlenecks in asset/render data flow (storage throughput, bandwidth, protocol overhead) and recommend improvements.
• Strong documentation habits: this is a handoff-heavy engagement across VFX and corporate technology teams.

Nice to Have:

• Experience with Entra ID/Intune-managed Windows endpoints (or willingness to work within that constraint).
• Experience writing artist-facing tools and plugins for the following DCC Applications such as Maya / Arnold / Mudbox / Shotgrid / Houdini / Nuke etc.
• Familiarity with ACES OCIO workflows using LUT systems and media encoding/transcoding tools (e.g., ffmpeg, avi, etc.)
• Experience with Docker and/or AWS.

Company Benefits:

• Rate: Hourly rates on a 1099 contract depending on experience and location.

It’s not necessary to meet all of the skillsets outlined above. Please feel free to send us a note and tell us why you would still be a great fit for this role or Thea Energy. Diversity and Inclusion: Thea Energy is an equal opportunity employer committed to creating a company of diverse backgrounds. By creating a diverse environment, we will bring new ideas and approaches to solving some of the world’s hardest (and most important) problems. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, family or marital status, age, disability, veteran’s status, or other characteristic protected by applicable laws and regulations.