Senior Manager – Cinematics TD (SFD / Cinematics)

Blizzard Entertainment • Irvine, CA

2d • $149,100 - $275,876 • Hybrid

About The Position

Blizzard Animation is hiring an experienced Senior Manager – Cinematics TD to lead a team of TD’s supporting multiple animation and cinematics projects. This role sits at the intersection of technology, production, and artistry, ensuring that artists across all departments have the workflows, tools, and technical support needed to deliver world-class content. The ideal candidate is an exceptional people leader, communicator, and technical expert who understands the end-to-end animation pipeline from asset creation and rigging through animation, FX, lighting, rendering, and final delivery. This individual will partner closely with Production, Department Supervisors, Technology teams and Studio Leadership to drive operational excellence, resolve complex production challenges, and continuously improve artist workflows. We are looking for someone with deep expertise in animation/VFX pipelines who also understands emerging production technologies and can identify practical opportunities to enhance artist productivity, streamline workflows, strengthen knowledge management, and support scalable production environments. This role is a hybrid work position, with some work on-site and some work-from-home. The home studio for this role is Irvine, CA. This is a full-time staff position.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in animation, VFX, game cinematics, or related digital content production environments
• 2+ years of experience managing technical teams, including Technical Directors, Pipeline TDs, Production Engineers, or similar roles
• Proven experience supporting artists and productions in fast-paced, deadline-driven environments
• Deep understanding of end-to-end animation and VFX production pipelines, including Asset creation and management, Rigging and character workflows, Animation pipelines, Simulation and FX workflows, Lighting and rendering, Production publishing and delivery
• Strong leadership, communication, and stakeholder management abilities.
• Experience partnering effectively with Production, Department Supervisors, and Engineering teams
• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to balance immediate production needs and long-term technical strategy
• Working knowledge of modern DCC applications such as Maya, Houdini, Katana, Nuke, or equivalent production tools
• Demonstrated understanding of current technology trends, advanced creative‑production tools, and their practical applications within modern content development pipelines.

Nice To Haves

• Experience leading TD organizations supporting multiple simultaneous productions.
• Background or working knowledge using Universal Scene Description (USD) workflows in production pipelines
• Experience with cloud-based production workflows and render infrastructure
• Knowledge of asset management systems, production tracking platforms, and workflow orchestration tools
• Experience evaluating or implementing next‑generation workflow enhancements that improve content creation, optimize production processes, or support cross‑team collaboration
• Experience managing organizational change and technology adoption initiatives

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Technical Directors supporting multiple concurrent productions
• Establish clear priorities, resource allocation, and career development plans for TD team members
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, customer service, collaboration, accountability
• Recruit, onboard, and retain high-performing technical talent
• Partner with Production Managers, Producers, Supervisors, and Department Leads to understand project priorities and technical needs
• Ensure timely and effective technical support for artists across all departments
• Provide strategic guidance on pipeline architecture, DCC integrations, automation, asset management, rendering, and production infrastructure
• Coordinate TD resources across productions to balance workload and address critical production challenges.
• Act as the primary escalation point for complex production and pipeline issues.
• Identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and recurring production of pain points, then implement scalable solutions.
• Establish best practices and standards for production support and technical troubleshooting

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance
• 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others
• Relocation assistance

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed