DreamWorks Technology - Principal Engineer, AI

NBCUniversal•Glendale, CA

20h•$190,000 - $230,000•Hybrid

About The Position

DreamWorks Animation is seeking a highly collaborative AI Architect and hands-on technical leader to support technical and creative departments. The role focuses on designing and delivering AI-powered agentic architectures that reduce repetitive, manual, low-creativity work for artists and production management while maintaining reliable production systems. The Principal Engineer will work with product owners, developers, creatives, platform teams, systems teams, security teams, engineers, and technical directors to develop and deploy AI-assisted workflows throughout the studio pipeline. The position also includes driving adoption, documenting and training users, measuring automation impact, and improving deployed tools based on artist feedback and production data. The position currently follows a hybrid schedule, requiring work from the office at least four days per week. The company may change in-office requirements. The role is eligible for company-sponsored benefits.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
10+ years of experience building production systems, including 2+ years building AI/ML systems for real workflows.
Hands-on experience deploying enterprise software in AI, data, or integration environments.
Expertise in containerization, orchestration, Python, TypeScript, React, and AI frameworks such as LangGraph, Spring AI, and MCP.
Deep understanding of LLM model integration and tuning.
Experience designing automation that reduces manual work in complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
Proven ability to influence senior engineers without formal authority and serve as a person others learn from.
History of building durable artifacts—such as frameworks, templates, training, or open source—that extend to other projects.
Excellent communication skills and ability to translate fluently between artists, production management, and engineers.
Genuine passion for animation, storytelling, or creative production.

Nice To Haves

2+ years in a Principal, Staff, or Lead role responsible for AI or pipeline automation, ideally in a creative studio.
Strong understanding of the animation production pipeline, departmental workflows, and industry-standard digital content creation software.
Familiarity with animation frameworks and standards such as USD, Autodesk Flow Production Tracking, and Jira.
Experience measuring and reporting the productivity impact of engineering tooling investments.
Keeps current with AI trends and emerging technologies.

Responsibilities

Collaborate with and advise product owners, developers, and creatives on next-generation AI-assisted agentic workflow strategy.
Design and own architecture for AI-powered frameworks and automation across studio pipelines and platforms.
Define end-to-end architecture for ingesting, processing, and routing operational telemetry, including metrics, logs, and traces.
Integrate solutions with popular industry digital content creation tools.
Prototype solutions for high-friction tasks such as asset tagging, scene preparation, render queue management, shot setup, and versioning.
Define technical standards and integration patterns for AI tooling across departments and shows.
Evaluate and select AI frameworks, foundation models, and automation technologies for creative production and operational stability.
Build and maintain reusable AI components and automation patterns.
Partner with platform, systems, and security teams to monitor model drift, system latency, and system security.
Write, test, and deploy production-ready tools that operate reliably in active show pipelines.
Develop reference implementations that establish canonical patterns for future pipeline AI work.
Partner with engineers and technical directors to integrate automation into existing artist-facing toolsets.
Maintain and improve deployed tools using artist feedback and production data.
Drive adoption of tools across technical and creative departments and help users understand and trust them.
Create lightweight training and documentation for artists and engineers.
Establish metrics for automation impact and regularly report results to studio leadership.
Promote continuous improvement and identify new automation opportunities as workflows evolve.