Senior Katana Technical Director (TD) – 6 Month Contract

Job Position(s): Senior Katana Technical Director (TD) - 6 Month Contract

Rodeo FX is hiring a Senior Katana Technical Director (TD) on a 6-month contract based in Montreal, Canada. This role sits inside the VFX pipeline team, where the focus is on building, optimizing, and maintaining the tools and configurations that keep crowd systems and production workflow running cleanly across shows. It suits an experienced pipeline TD who thinks in Python and C++ and knows what it takes to support a high-volume VFX production environment at the senior level.

About the Role

The Senior Katana Technical Director works under the TD Supervisor and partners directly with Department Supervisors and the Animation Director to solve pipeline problems and develop tooling that improves crowd performance and overall production throughput. Day to day, this means writing and integrating plugins, managing configurations, and making sure the tools you build are documented well enough for the team to actually use them. This is a hands-on technical role inside a studio with a substantial episodic television and feature film production slate.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize pipeline tools in Python and C++ with a focus on crowd performance within the Katana environment.
• Integrate new services and tools into the existing VFX pipeline by writing plugins and extensions that meet production specifications.
• Work with the TD Supervisor to manage the integration and ongoing maintenance of pipeline configurations across active productions.
• Write clear technical documentation for all tools and code developed, ensuring continuity across the team.
• Apply analytical thinking when executing corrections and troubleshooting issues flagged by supervisors or production coordination.
• Respect production schedules and quotas as communicated by the Coordination team, maintaining delivery standards throughout the contract.

What You Bring

• Proven senior-level experience as a Technical Director in a VFX pipeline or animation studio environment.
• Strong working knowledge of Katana, with practical experience building tools and extensions within it.
• Proficiency in Python and C++, specifically in the context of pipeline development and plugin authoring.
• Experience supporting crowd systems or animation pipelines on feature film or episodic television productions.
• A track record of writing usable technical documentation for tools delivered in a production context.

Why This Role

Rodeo FX is a Montreal-based studio with credits across major streaming and theatrical productions, giving a Senior Katana Technical Director real exposure to high-end VFX work at scale. The 6-month contract structure offers a defined scope with the kind of pipeline challenges that actually build a TD’s toolkit. The studio has a reputation for technically serious work and a team that expects peers, not just contributors.

Apply now for the Senior Katana Technical Director role at Rodeo FX and bring your pipeline expertise to a production environment that will put it to use.