Lead Render Wrangler

Swaybox Studios•New Orleans, LA

3d•Onsite

About The Position

Swaybox Studios is rewriting the rulebook of visual storytelling. As we collaborate with DC Studios/ Warner Bros Pictures Animation and Matt Reeves’ 6th and Idaho on a revolutionary new project, you’ll play a vital role in coordinating the artistry and logistics that bring bold visions to life. This is your chance to help lead a production that’s equal parts innovative and unforgettable. Swaybox Studios is seeking a technically skilled and highly organized Lead Render Wrangler to join our VFX team and help establish, operate, and optimize our render farm for feature film production. This role will be instrumental in the initial setup and ongoing management of our rendering infrastructure, supporting a hybrid environment of dedicated render nodes, artist workstations, and cloud-based rendering resources. The Lead Render Wrangler will work closely with Pipeline, IT, Supervisors, Technical Directors, and Production to ensure renders move efficiently through the farm, troubleshoot failed or stalled jobs, manage priorities, and identify potential capacity or infrastructure issues before they impact production. In addition to the day-to-day operation of the render farm, this person will help develop render farm workflows, monitoring practices, documentation, and escalation procedures as the studio scales into full production. The ideal candidate is technically curious, calm under pressure, highly communicative, and comfortable working in a growing studio environment where systems and workflows are actively being developed. This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced Render Wrangler or technically minded VFX professional who enjoys solving problems, improving workflows, and helping build a reliable rendering operation from the ground up.

Requirements

Previous experience in a lead or senior Render Wrangler position, working in VFX, animation, feature film, or another high-volume CG production environment
Experience mentoring or overseeing other Render Wranglers.
Professional experience with render wrangling, render farm operations, pipeline support, systems support, or a comparable technical production role.
Strong understanding of CG rendering workflows and the relationship between artists, render software, render farms, storage, and production pipelines.
Experience working with a render farm management or queue-management system such as Deadline, OpenCue, Qube!, Tractor, or similar.
Experience troubleshooting failed render jobs and interpreting render logs and error messages.
Familiarity with common VFX and CG applications such as Maya, Houdini, Nuke, Unreal Engine, or similar production software.
Experience working with cloud render management services such as AWS Deadline Cloud or similar cloud infrastructure.
Experience managing hybrid render environments combining on-premises hardware and cloud resources.
Experience with Deadline Monitor, Deadline Client, and management of Deadline Workers.
Working knowledge of Windows and/or Linux environments, file systems, network storage, and shared production resources.
Ability to distinguish between scene-related, pipeline-related, licensing, network, storage, and hardware issues and escalate appropriately.
Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities in a deadline-driven production environment.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to explain technical issues clearly to both technical and non-technical team members.
Ability to work independently, take ownership of problems, and follow issues through to resolution.
Comfortable working in an evolving production environment where workflows, tools, and infrastructure may continue to change as production scales.

Nice To Haves

Experience helping build, expand, migrate, or configure a render farm for VFX or animation production.
Experience with both CPU- and GPU-based rendering workflows.
Familiarity with renderers such as Arnold, Unreal, or similar rendering technologies.
Experience supporting Unreal Engine rendering workflows in a VFX or feature film environment.
Familiarity with scripting or automation using Python, PowerShell, Bash, or similar tools.
Experience with production tracking systems such as Flow Production Tracking (ShotGrid).
Understanding of software licensing and license-server considerations within render farm environments.
Familiarity with render farm performance metrics, capacity planning, utilization reporting, and cost analysis.
Experience working closely with Pipeline Engineering, Systems/IT, and Production teams to develop and improve studio rendering workflows.
Experience working in a startup, rapidly growing studio, or production environment where infrastructure and workflows are being developed alongside active production.

Responsibilities

Assist with the setup, configuration, testing, and rollout of the studio's render farm infrastructure in collaboration with Pipeline and IT.
Lead the day-to-day operation and monitoring of the render farm, ensuring render jobs are processing efficiently and production priorities are being met.
Monitor render queues, machine availability, worker health, job failures, storage usage, and overall farm utilization.
Troubleshoot failed, stalled, or inefficient render jobs and identify whether issues originate from scenes, assets, software, licensing, hardware, plugins, or pipeline configuration.
Work closely with artists and department leads to diagnose rendering issues and provide clear guidance on next steps.
Coordinate render priorities with VFX Production, Supervisors, and department leads based on production schedules, reviews, and delivery deadlines.
Help establish and maintain render farm policies, queue structures, priorities, resource allocation, and best practices.
Support a hybrid rendering environment that may include dedicated CPU/GPU render nodes, artist workstations utilized during off-hours, and cloud-based rendering resources.
Assist Pipeline and IT with testing new render hardware, software versions, plugins, licenses, and configurations before deployment into production.
Monitor farm capacity and utilization trends and communicate potential bottlenecks or resource shortages to Production, Pipeline, and IT.
Track and report useful render metrics, including render times, machine utilization, job failure rates, queue volume, and capacity requirements.
Help identify unusually expensive or inefficient renders and work with artists and technical teams to determine potential optimizations.
Support the integration and testing of cloud rendering and assist with determining when additional cloud capacity may be required to meet production demand.
Help establish procedures for escalating technical issues to Pipeline, IT, or department Technical Directors.
Maintain clear documentation for render farm workflows, troubleshooting procedures, common errors, and operational best practices.
Develop processes for shift handoffs and communication so that render issues, priorities, and outstanding problems are clearly documented.
Train, mentor, and provide day-to-day guidance to additional Render Wranglers as the render team grows.
Collaborate with Pipeline and Production to continuously improve render submission, monitoring, reporting, and resource-management workflows.