R&D Engineer

Eyeline, the research and technology arm of Netflix’s VFX production studio, is hiring an R&D Engineer based in Vancouver, Canada. This role sits at the intersection of VFX pipeline development and applied research, turning experimental algorithms and open-source tools into working prototypes that artists and production teams can actually use. It suits an engineer who has spent time close to production workflows and knows how to make research land in the real world without waiting for perfect conditions.

About the Role

Eyeline operates as the applied research group feeding directly into Netflix’s VFX production pipeline, which means the work here has a clear destination: real productions, real artists, real deadlines. An R&D Engineer in this team spends their days building proof-of-concept tools, validating emerging techniques like 3D Gaussian Splatting and video diffusion models, and stress-testing prototypes against actual VFX production scenarios. The job is less about maintaining systems and more about figuring out what should become a system in the first place.

Key Responsibilities

• Translate research publications and open-source developments into functional prototypes that can be evaluated inside active VFX production environments.
• Build plugins, scripts, and lightweight connectors for creative software including Houdini, Nuke, and Unreal Engine to test feasibility before full pipeline integration.
• Develop and maintain data preparation pipelines for multi-view and video datasets, covering synchronization, metadata handling, and quality validation.
• Conduct structured evaluations of emerging tools against real production timelines, documenting outcomes to inform decisions about what gets built into scalable products.
• Work directly with artists to gather feedback on prototypes, iterating quickly based on usability and production constraints rather than theoretical benchmarks.
• Train and fine-tune video diffusion and radiance-field-based models on custom datasets to assess their practical application in VFX workflows.

What You Bring

• Strong software engineering background with hands-on rapid prototyping experience in Python and C++.
• Practical experience with 3D Gaussian Splatting, NeRFs, or similar radiance-field methods, including training and evaluation.
• Experience training or fine-tuning generative video models, combined with hands-on multi-view camera calibration work.
• Familiarity with VFX data formats and pipeline standards such as USD, OpenEXR, and OCIO is a strong asset.
• Comfort navigating ambiguity and making pragmatic trade-offs between research ambition and production feasibility.

Why This Role

Eyeline sits inside one of the most well-resourced content production operations in the industry, which means the research problems here are real and the path from prototype to production is shorter than almost anywhere else. The compensation range for this Vancouver, BC position is $130,000 to $200,000 CAD per year, determined by qualifications, skills, and experience. For an engineer who wants their work to show up on screen, this is a rare place to do it.

Apply now for the R&D Engineer role at Eyeline and bring the next generation of VFX production tools to life.