I operate across engineering, product, and technical direction, leading multi-team organisations of up to 13 people, turning ambiguous problems into product strategy, and designing operating models that let teams deliver consistently at scale, often through influence beyond formal authority.
Selected Impact
- Led organisations of up to 13 people across engineering, QA, and product.
- Turned a customer problem into an extensibility strategy adopted at director level.
- Designed an engineering operating model that became the template for four teams across two product areas.
- Developed four engineers toward engineering management across three organisations.
Skills
- Leadership & Strategy: Engineering Strategy, Problem Framing, Organisation Design, Operating Models, Executive Communication, Cross-Functional Leadership
- People & Delivery: Multi-Team Management, Engineering Management, Roadmap Planning, Delivery Process Design, Coaching Managers, Technical Hiring
- Technical: C++, Python, Machine Learning, System Architecture, GPU Computing, High-Performance Computing, OpenUSD, Research Engineering, Developer Experience
Experience
Foundry, London
Engineering Manager, Katana / Lead Software Engineer
Jul 2025 - Present
- Lead two engineering teams (~13 people across engineering, QA, and product) delivering the core of Katana. Expanded from one team to two following an organisational restructure, absorbing the change without missing a release.
- Reframed a customer problem into an extensibility strategy, validated it with major VFX studios, and drove adoption at director level.
- Contributed to two Operational Excellence initiatives shaping Foundry’s AI engineering practices, including approved guidelines for labelling AI-generated code.
- Identified and closed a 15-year tooling gap in Katana’s Python development environment, enabling LSP and debugger support for every engineer on the product. Prototyped independently, built the case through a tech talk, and shipped during an innovation sprint without disrupting team delivery.
- Designed a delivery process adopted across the entire Katana product line: a rotating Feature Facilitator role that shifted refinement sessions from ad-hoc discovery to cross-functional preparation, increasing tickets refined per session from 2-3 to 10+. Built within one team, adopted voluntarily by the other two.
- Maintained delivery continuity through a major architecture transition, creating enough capacity for the team to propose and ship an additional feature within a single sprint, rounding out the Katana 9 release.
- Invested actively in leadership development beyond my formal scope: coached two peer EMs, supported two former directs through their transition into management, and mentored a senior engineer in another product group.
Foundry, London
Engineering Manager, AI Research / Lead Software Engineer
Jul 2022 - Jul 2025
- Set roadmaps with product stakeholders, led planning and tracking, and presented the organisation’s work to the executive team at quarterly reviews; designed the technical hiring framework for research engineering, later adopted by other groups across the organisation.
- Split a single research team into a two-team organisation (~9 people) as demand grew, designing the operating model that the wider organisation later adopted across four teams.
- Led researchers shipping production ML capabilities for Nuke, including major expansions to CopyCat and Inference, and laid the research foundations for features that shipped in subsequent releases.
- Developed two senior engineers into engineering managers who now lead their own teams, one through a year of deliberate coaching on skill gaps and career direction, one by recognising her readiness and creating the conditions for her to step up.
Foundry, London
Senior Software Engineer, Real-Time Research
Sep 2020 - Jul 2022
- As the most senior engineer on the early Nuke Stage team, prototyped across the full stack while the product direction was still being defined: GPU kernels, application architecture, camera-tracking integration, and networking. The exploratory work shaped the direction the shipping product was built on and is now used on live film productions.
- Joined as the OpenUSD expert and built the early prototype of Nuke’s OpenUSD-based 3D system in collaboration with the lead architect. The prototype was greenlit and matured by the team into what ships today.
DNEG, London
Software Engineer, R&D
Aug 2019 - Sep 2020
- Designed and built the asset resolution system for the studio’s OpenUSD-based Scene Description platform, the layer responsible for locating and loading assets across productions, and contributed fixes and improvements to core platform systems as part of the production technology team.
- Built foundational pipeline tools used on Tenet, No Time to Die, and Fast & Furious 9, supporting production systems that remained in use across projects.
Animal Logic (now Netflix Animation), Sydney
Software Engineer, R&D
Feb 2016 - Aug 2019
- Created an in-house authoring framework that changed how the entire rigging team worked, and maintained it across feature animation pipelines. Work used on productions including Captain Marvel, The LEGO Movie 2, and the Peter Rabbit series.
- Contributed to Animal Logic’s early adoption of OpenUSD at feature-film scale, one of the first studios outside Pixar to do so. Solved the source-of-truth sync problem in a mixed pipeline mid-migration, and helped design the holistic approach that followed.
VFX Industry, Multiple Studios
Rigging Supervisor / Lead & Senior Character TD
2005 - 2015
- Rigging Supervisor at Kandor Graphics, leading the rigging department through full feature-film production, managing a team of artists and coordinating across animation and tools teams.
- Senior Character TD across features, episodic, and commercial productions including The LEGO Batman Movie and The LEGO Ninjago Movie, with credits spanning over a decade of internationally released work.
Recommendations
Cesar is a skilled software engineer who believes in the craft of coding and has a great understanding of how software fits together. He doesn't settle for what's worked in the past, but is an innovator who searches for newer, better and cooler ways to do things.– Eoin Murphy, Senior Software Engineer at NVIDIA
I had the pleasure of working with Cesar for The Lego Batman movie and Lego Ninjago Movie. He was a great problem solver and was always looking for ways to improve our processes and pipeline. I depended on him to assist our more entry level team members and he did a great job teaching us new ways to produce better code.– Josh Murtack, Senior Creature Technical Director at Weta FX
The best assets of Cesar are their creativity in front of problems and his incredible human touch. During his time as Lead Character TD, he worked to provide flexibility and reliability to the rigs, as well as tools for all the departments. Then, he took the helm of the rigging department and thanks to him we were able to work as a solid team, bringing solutions for all the studio, and facing long-term goals for next productions. And after all this, it seems that we only scratch the surface of his ideas and potential.– Ricard Miras Bellavista, Character TD and Developer at 23lunes
Cesar has an excellent balance of innovation and productivity. He is always thinking about faster, cleaner and reusable ways to achieve things but never forgets that his tools and rigs will be used by people in a real production. Furthermore, he likes teamwork and is willing to help colleagues. I am lucky to be working with him.– Angel Pavon, Core Development Manager at Raw Gaming Group
Education
Universidad Central, Chile
B.Sc. in Construction Engineering
2000 - 2005
Passed with Distinction
Social Links
- Github: https://www.github.com/csaez
- Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@cesarsaez
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cesarsaez
- Website: https://www.cesarsaez.com