DreamWorks Technology - Principal Engineer, AI

About the role

DreamWorks Animation is seeking a highly collaborative AI Architect who will be a hands-on technical leader assistive across multiple teams aimed to provide results to both technical and creative departments. This role involves identifying, designing, and delivering AI-powered agentic architecture that eliminates the repetitive, manual, low-creativity tasks that pull artists and production management away from their craft, while maintaining high operational availability to ensure production systems run reliably.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate and advise on next-generation AI-assisted agentic workflows strategy alongside product owners, developers and creatives.
• Design and own the architecture for AI-powered frameworks and automation across the entire Studio pipeline and platforms.
• Define the end-to-end architecture for ingestion, processing, and routing of operational telemetry (metrics, logs, traces).
• Integrate solutions with popular industry DCC tools.
• Prototype solutions for high-friction tasks: asset tagging, scene prep, 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 a library of 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 run reliably inside active show pipelines.
• Develop reference implementations that set the canonical pattern for future pipeline AI work.
• Partner with engineers and TDs to fold automation into existing artist-facing toolsets.
• Maintain and iterate on deployed tools based on artist feedback and production data.
• Drive adoption across both technical and creative departments so tools are understood, trusted, and used.
• Create lightweight training and documentation for artists and engineers.
• Establish metrics for automation impact and report results to studio leadership on a regular cadence.
• Champion a culture of continuous improvement and surface new automation opportunities as workflows evolve.

Qualifications

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

Preferred Qualifications

• 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 (DCC) 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.
• Stays current with AI trends and emerging technologies.

Benefits

• Company sponsored benefits, including medical, dental and vision insurance, 401(k), paid leave, tuition reimbursement, and a variety of other discounts and perks.

Pay

Salary range: $190,000 - $230,000

Schedule

This position has been designated as fully remote, meaning that the position is expected to contribute from a non-DreamWorks worksite, most commonly an employee’s residence.