Job Description

Walt Disney Imagineering’s Research & Development organization is building a new Intelligent Interactive Character Studio to take the most well-known characters in the world and turn them into interactive experiences for a new generation of fans and guests. The team is comprised of a cross disciplinary group of designers, writers, artists, and software engineers. Its charter includes developing a robust and scalable entertainment platform supporting interactive character experiences with up to millions of concurrent users. The studio develops mobile, VR, AR, Mixed Reality, and custom physically situated applications built on a core platform, independently and in partnership with 3rd party developers.

We’re seeking an Associate Tools Developer to design and implement features within a software toolchain for the creation of incredible new interactive character experiences. In collaboration with conversational designers at the Intelligent Interactive Character Studio, the tools group will define and create the software that enables our world class artists and designers to bring our characters to life and connect with our guests in new ways. You are highly collaborative, flexible, and scrappy, while ensuring a high degree of polish for guest-facing products and experiences. You are willing to take the time necessary to understand creative goals and propose and effectively communicate solutions. Members of the new studio are expected to thrive in a fast-paced, startup-style environment where ambiguity and building things from zero to one are the norm.

Responsibilities :

• Support development of a production pipeline and related tooling to deliver robust, scalable interactive character experiences integrating internal and externally developed AI/ML tools for speech, language, and other domains.
• Compile and understand system requirements and assess their feasibility to enhance the character experience production pipeline
• Analyze existing features in the engine and available tools and suggest improvements by designing and implementing new systems whenever necessary
• Support the features and systems designed for production: production workflows in the engine, plugins for third-party applications and productivity tools (compilation, build process, etc.)
• Produce tool documentation to educate production talent on tool features and usage
• Work with a production-oriented mindset, delivering efficient, scalable, and maintainable code.
• Communicate complex technical, architectural, and/or organizational problems and propose thorough iterative solutions.
• Deliver maintainable code in a dynamic development environment with rapidly changing requirements.
• Conduct code reviews of peers and contribute feedback to improve overall system quality.
• Write unit tests
• Specification, design and development of tools for creating, modifying, testing and deploying interactive AI systems.
• Work with content creators and designers to identify and develop features that speed up their character creation process.
• Designing, prototyping, and deploying tools which leverage machine learning to provide non-technical users an intuitive interface for building autonomous characters.
  
  

Basic Qualifications :

• Expertise with multiple modern programming languages including Python, C++ or Javascript.
• Experience with container orchestration tooling (Docker, Marathon)
• Knowledge of common developer tools such as git, CMake, package management systems.
• Familiarity with Unix based operating systems.
• Experience working in a collaborative development environment and a shared codebase.
• Expertise with game engines such as Unreal Engine or Unity.
• Familiarity with game engine tooling and workflows.
  
  

Preferred Qualifications:

• Understanding of game design or interactive experience design.
• Familiarity with NLP tools and/or other ML based conversational AI design technologies and their inherent limitations
• Experience with key machine learning libraries such as PyTorch or Tensorflow.
• Experience integrating and deploying machine learning in a relevant domain – computer vision, natural language, speech processing.
• Familiarity with 3D content creation tools such as Maya or 3DSMax
  
  

Required Education :

• MS in Computer Science or equivalent or BS in Computer Science or equivalent with 2+ years industry experience.
  
  

Additional Information :

Benefits and Perks: Disney offers a rewards package to help you live your best life. This includes health and savings benefits, educational opportunities and special extras that only Disney can provide. Learn more about our benefits and perks at https://jobs.disneycareers.com/benefits

884192BR