Machine Learning Supervisor
Employment type: Full-time
Location: European Union — Spain preferred
Language: Full professional fluency in English required
Company Description
Pitch Black is a global collective of award-winning creative studios with a strong heritage in visual effects and digital production for film, television and streaming.
The group brings together Square One, FOLKS, Rising Sun Pictures and El Ranchito, combining local creative leadership with international reach. Our teams collaborate across studios, disciplines and time zones to deliver ambitious visual work and develop new technologies and production methods for the future of visual effects.
Role Description
We are looking for a hands-on Machine Learning Supervisor to lead the development and production adoption of machine-learning tools across its VFX work.
This role sits at the intersection of VFX supervision, artistic craft, pipeline engineering and applied machine learning. It is not a purely research-focused or software-management position: the objective is to solve real production problems and turn promising technologies into reliable, controllable and artist-friendly workflows.
Candidates may come from any VFX discipline—including compositing, FX, lighting, environments, assets or pipeline. Substantial hands-on experience in VFX production is strongly preferred.
However, we are also open to exceptional ML leaders without a traditional VFX background if they can demonstrate internationally recognised expertise, significant original contributions to the field and a clear ability to apply that knowledge to visual, creative and production challenges.
The Machine Learning Supervisor will report to the Head of Innovation at Pitch Black and work closely with El Ranchito’s VFX Supervisors, department heads, Pipeline, Production and Technology teams.
The role will lead and mentor ML TDs, ML Artists, software engineers and other technical contributors involved in developing and integrating these workflows.
This position is open to candidates based anywhere within the European Union. Being based in Spain is preferred but is not required.
Responsibilities
- Define the machine-learning strategy and roadmap for the group in collaboration with the Head of Innovation and the studio’s creative, technical and production leadership.
- Identify production challenges where ML can provide a measurable improvement in quality, efficiency, consistency or scalability.
- Design, prototype and productionise ML solutions for image, video, geometry and asset-based VFX workflows.
- Establish clear evaluation criteria and benchmark models using representative production material.
- Evaluate internal and third-party technologies for visual quality, temporal consistency, controllability, editability, performance, cost and production readiness.
- Lead and mentor ML TDs, ML Artists, software engineers and other technical contributors while remaining actively involved in prototyping and problem-solving.
- Review system architecture and code, helping establish strong software-engineering practices within the ML team.
- Work directly with artists and supervisors to ensure that ML tools support creative intent and provide sufficient control for production use.
- Integrate ML tools into established VFX pipelines, DCC applications, compute infrastructure and review processes.
- Establish standards for model and dataset versioning, testing, evaluation, reproducibility, documentation and deployment.
- Assess whether workflows are robust enough for production and clearly define their limitations and appropriate use cases.
- Plan development priorities, estimate effort, coordinate timelines and identify technical or production risks.
- Work with the relevant studio teams to ensure that client material, datasets, models and outputs comply with security, confidentiality, licensing and intellectual-property requirements.
- Communicate technical decisions, progress and risks clearly to artists, supervisors, producers and senior stakeholders.
- Follow developments in applied ML and determine which advances offer genuine value to VFX production.
Requirements
- Significant professional experience as a VFX artist, TD, lead or supervisor on feature film or high-end episodic productions is strongly preferred.
- A broad understanding of VFX workflows and the complete shot-production lifecycle, from turnover and asset development through review and final delivery.
- Demonstrated experience developing or deploying machine-learning, computer-vision or generative workflows beyond isolated experimental demos.
- Strong Python skills and experience writing maintainable, production-quality code.
- Practical experience with an ML framework such as PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow or equivalent.
- A solid understanding of model inference, evaluation, fine-tuning, dataset preparation and GPU-based processing.
- Strong software-design skills and the ability to make sound architectural decisions for production systems.
- Experience integrating technical tools into applications such as Nuke, Houdini, Maya, Blender, Unreal Engine or equivalent production software is highly valued.
- Strong visual judgement and the ability to assess results in terms of image quality, consistency, art direction, editability and suitability for final delivery.
- A generalist mindset and the ability to move comfortably between creative, pipeline, software and ML challenges.
- Proven experience leading or mentoring multidisciplinary technical and creative teams.
- The ability to explain complex technical ideas clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Full professional fluency in spoken and written English, with confidence collaborating across international teams and time zones.
- Candidates must be based within the European Union for the duration of the role. Spain is preferred but not essential.
Candidates without a traditional VFX background may still be considered if they can demonstrate an exceptional and internationally recognised track record in applied machine learning. This may include influential publications, widely adopted open-source work, significant production deployments or other original contributions directly applicable to image, video, 3D or VFX production.
Valuable Additional Experience
- C++, CUDA or GPU performance optimisation.
- Linux, Git, containerised deployment, CI/CD and environment management.
- Distributed systems, scalable architectures and high-performance computing.
- Cloud, on-premises or render-farm infrastructure.
- Diffusion models, video generation, neural rendering, 3D or 4D reconstruction and temporal consistency systems.
- USD, OpenColorIO, ACES, EXR and high-dynamic-range image pipelines.
- Building artist-facing interfaces that make complex technical systems practical to use.
- Model licensing, training-data provenance, production security or AI governance.
- Experience moving ML prototypes into stable, supported production environments.
Application
Please include a CV and a reel, portfolio or technical breakdown demonstrating your production VFX experience, ML-related work or recognised contributions to the field.
We are particularly interested in concise case studies explaining the problem, your individual contribution, the approach taken, its limitations and the final result.
- Publications, code samples, open-source contributions and tool demonstrations are welcome where they can be shared without disclosing confidential material.