Product Owner, Rigging

Product Owner, Rigging at Autodesk

We are seeking a Product Owner to join our Media & Entertainment group at Autodesk to help drive the future of 3D Animation and Rigging workflows. As a Product Owner, you will leverage your industry knowledge of Movies, TV, and/or Games character rigging production to facilitate and help translate client needs into development intents. You will work closely with developers to help define and prioritize deliverables through creation of themes, epics, and user stories. As part of an Agile team, you'll partner with Scrum Masters, Developers and Development Managers, Product Managers, UX Designers, and other key stakeholders on aligning deliverables with broader product and company strategic goals. Deep experience within a previous Product Owner or similar role is valuable but not required as training will be provided.

Responsibilities

• Stay informed on state-of-the-art character animation and rigging techniques and trends including AI/ML.
• Leverage your film/tv/games animation and rigging experience to proficiently summarize customer needs and goals in clear and concise themes, epics, and user stories.
• Effectively divide overall project goals into prioritized deliverables.
• Work closely with product management to ensure product development's continued alignment with broader business goals.
• Prioritize user stories for sequential and focused team progress, potentially balancing needs from different stakeholders.
• Collect and respond to customer and stakeholder feedback, appropriately adjusting feature scope, timing, and priority of deliverables.
• Ensure transparency, alignment, and understanding of team focus and direction among all stakeholders.
• Accessible to team members for explanation and clarification of project goals, priorities, and constraints.
• Ensure the team maintains focus on quality over quantity and stress the importance of quality to all stakeholders.
• Ensure new work done conforms to established standards and meets design specifications.
• Ensure new work meets performance goals/metrics.
• Own the product backlog, practicing just in time grooming. Write stories and acceptance criteria as needed, delegate where necessary, but ensure story quality and readiness throughout.
• Foster creativity and innovation with the team.
• Perform product discovery where appropriate to integrate learnings from existing and potential customers.

Minimum Qualifications

• 5-8+ years of experience film/tv/game production working as a Rigger and closely with Animators.
• An intimate understanding and point of view on customer problems related to Character Rigging and Animation and can effectively contribute to solutions.
• Experience creating and/or using AI/ML tools in character authoring and adjacent space.
• Highly interested in developing elegant solutions and tools to streamline the Character production process and make a significant impact on the entertainment industry.
• Proven ability to work within cross functional teams on sizable productions and/or projects.
• Inclusive with superior collaboration skills.
• Excellent verbal and written communication abilities.

Preferred Qualifications

• Work experience in VFX, Animation, and/or Games production as a Rigger, Animator, Technical Animator, and/or Character FX artist.
• Work experience as a Technical Program Manager/Product Owner/Scrum Master in software/technology.
• Up-to-date expertise in modern character animation and rigging best practices, production pipelines, AI/ML, and human-centered design.
• Experience working in Agile environments.
• Experience with shipping technology, software products, and solutions to businesses.

The Ideal Candidate

• Worked within the film/tv/game production industries as a character Rigger and has hands-on understanding of best practices for modern 3D character animation production including AI's role in the creative process.
• Strong desire to advance the Character production process for the global entertainment industry.
• Worked with Agile teams of developers, product managers, and designers to deliver software for artists.

Key skills/competency

• Product Ownership
• Character Rigging
• 3D Animation
• Agile Methodologies
• Scrum
• User Stories
• AI/ML
• Media & Entertainment
• Stakeholder Management
• Production Pipelines