Pipeline Engineer Trainee

Skydance Media is hiring a Pipeline Engineer Trainee at its animation studio in Madrid, Spain. This role sits within the studio’s pipeline engineering department, supporting proprietary software tools used across concurrent feature film productions. It suits a computer science student in their final year who wants to move from academic work into real animation pipeline development.

About the Role

The Pipeline Engineer Trainee works directly inside the technical infrastructure that keeps Skydance Animation’s feature film productions running. Day to day, that means writing and debugging code within a supervised team structure, following established technical guidelines, and getting hands-on exposure to the VFX pipeline and 3D animation workflow that professional productions depend on. This is a paid, on-site internship running a minimum of three months, Monday through Friday at 35 hours per week.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop new features and fix bugs in proprietary software tools used across active feature film productions at the studio.
• Write Python and PyQt scripts that meet the team’s established technical standards and code health expectations.
• Work within the animation pipeline to address technical debt and maintain the integrity of production-critical tools.
• Follow the guidance of an assigned tutor throughout the internship, applying feedback directly to live project work.
• Support other pipeline engineers on the team when production demands require additional technical assistance.

What You Bring

• Current enrollment in the final year of an Associate, Bachelor’s, or Master’s program in Computer Science or a closely related technical field at an accredited institution.
• Scripting proficiency in Python and PyQt, applied to tool development or software engineering projects.
• Strong understanding of 3D animation concepts and how they relate to animation pipeline and production workflow.
• A clear sense of code craft, including attention to code quality, documentation, and technical debt management.
• High English proficiency is required; Spanish language skills are a plus for working within the Madrid studio environment.

Why This Role

Skydance Media has built a feature animation studio in Madrid that is producing original content at a scale where pipeline engineering work has immediate, visible impact on productions in progress. This trainee program is structured to include access to studio leadership and transferable technical skills, not just task execution. For a final-year student targeting a career in animation pipeline or VFX pipeline engineering, this is a direct entry point into that world.

Apply now for the Pipeline Engineer Trainee position at Skydance Media and bring your technical skills into a working feature animation studio.