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Cesar Saez

London, UK - hi@cesarsaez.com

Engineering Manager

Engineering leader with deep technical roots spanning ML research, real-time graphics, and large-scale production platforms. Over 20 years I have grown from writing C++ and Python for visual effects into leading engineering teams, scaling them, and shaping how they work - often through influence rather than authority.

Leading a team of PhD researchers in a domain I initially knew little about taught me the most important lesson of my career: to stop being the smartest person in the room, delegate real ownership, and measure my success by the team’s rather than by the code I write. I retain enough technical depth to unblock teams, challenge architectural decisions, and step into critical work when delivery is at risk, but my focus is developing engineers into leaders - for example through a rotating tech-lead role that lets them test-drive leadership with support.

Contact me

Selected Organizational Impact

  • Developing Leaders: Grew two senior engineers into engineering managers who now lead their own teams; currently coach two peer managers and mentor a senior engineer preparing for management.
  • Scaling Teams & Delivery: Took a single research team and scaled it into a two-team org, setting the operating model the wider group grew on; later designed a delivery process adopted across an entire product line.
  • Engineering Impact: Bridged research and product to ship flagship ML features in an industry-standard tool, and removed long-standing productivity blockers across an engineering group.

Skills

  • Engineering Leadership: Multi-Team Management, Team Scaling & Org Design, Performance & Promotion Cycles, Coaching & Developing Leaders, Technical Hiring
  • Strategy & Delivery: Roadmap Planning, Executive & Stakeholder Communication, Cross-Functional Alignment (Product/Research/QA), Delivery Process Design, Operating Models
  • Technical: C++ & Python, System Architecture, High-Performance & GPU Computing, USD (Universal Scene Description), Research Engineering, Developer Experience (DevEx)

Experience

Foundry, London

Engineering Manager, Katana

Jul 2025 - Present

  • Manage two engineering teams (~13 people across engineering, QA, and product) delivering the core of the next major product release - one team on the underlying data and rendering infrastructure, the other on the user-facing features built on top. Expanded from leading one team to two after an org restructuring, taking on the larger area when a peer manager departed and consolidating a domain that had struggled to deliver.
  • Kept a team delivering ahead of schedule after it lost its lead architect mid-project. Stepped in to fill the technical gap myself while shifting the team from dependence on one expert to broad autonomy. It went on to outperform its peers sprint after sprint, routinely finishing early and picking up work from other teams.
  • Designed a delivery process now used across the entire product line. Introduced a rotating Feature Facilitator role that assigns an engineer to perform upfront technical analysis before implementation. It turned planning from open-ended discovery into fast, well-informed estimation, and was adopted by all three teams.
  • Shipped a customer-facing feature that would otherwise have slipped a full release cycle. With the roadmap done early, I secured product sign-off and delivered it in one sprint - sequencing the breaking changes into the major release so the finished feature could land in the next maintenance update rather than a year later.
  • Removed a long-standing productivity blocker for the whole engineering group. Built a tooling fix that made IDE and debugger workflows work on our codebase for the first time, and drove team-wide adoption of build caching - turning slow rebuilds into a non-event.
  • Coach peer engineering managers across multiple organizations, and - at the CTO’s recommendation - mentor a senior engineer in another department preparing for a management role.

Foundry, London

Engineering Manager, AI Research

Jul 2022 - Jul 2025

  • Grew a single research team into a two-team organization I managed directly (~9 people), setting the operating model a four-team org later scaled on. As demand rose I hired, split the work into two focused teams, and established the structure and ways of working that new teams adopted as the org expanded.
  • Developed two senior engineers into engineering managers who now lead teams. For one, that meant a year of deliberate coaching - closing skill gaps and helping her choose between an IC and a management path. Building the next layer of leadership was a core part of the job, not a byproduct.
  • Filled responsibilities typically handled by dedicated product and delivery managers. With neither function in place early on, I owned roadmapping with product stakeholders, ran the team’s planning and tracking, and regularly presented the org’s work to the executive team at quarterly reviews.
  • Led a team of researchers doing novel ML research - building and training models - and shipped three flagship features into Nuke (CopyCat, Inference, Cattery), Foundry’s industry-standard compositing tool used on virtually every major film production for over a decade. I also personally bridged the smaller integration gap into product until that work grew into its own team.
  • Built and ran the technical hiring framework for research engineering. Designed a metrics-based scoring system for the technical evaluation and ran a consistent interview panel against it to compare candidates objectively - later adapted and shared with other groups to make hiring more consistent and less biased.

Foundry, London

Senior Software Engineer, Real-Time Research

Sep 2020 - Jul 2022

  • Drove early prototyping of what became Nuke Stage, Foundry’s real-time virtual production product (now used on live film productions). As the most senior engineer in the early team, I built prototypes across the stack while the product direction was still being found - GPU compute kernels for 2.5D virtual-production scenarios (on-set color grading, spherical mapping), the application and plugin architecture, camera-tracking integration, and networking. This exploratory work helped shape the direction the shipping product was later built on.
  • Joined as the team’s USD expert and contributed to the early prototype of Nuke’s USD-based 3D system. Collaborated with the project’s lead architect during the prototyping phase, building out core nodes for a plugin that could coexist with Nuke’s native 3D system. The prototype was greenlit and matured by the team over several years 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 Scene Description platform (built on USD) - the layer that determines how assets are located and loaded across productions. Also fixed and improved core systems across the platform as part of the production technology team.
  • Built foundational tools used across major feature-film productions, including Tenet, No Time to Die, and Fast & Furious 9 - the kind of core pipeline systems that outlast any single project.

Animal Logic, 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.
  • Engineered scalable production pipelines using USD, enabling flexible asset interchange and supporting studio-wide growth.

Earlier Career in Animation/VFX

Rigging Supervisor / Lead & Senior Character TD

2005 - 2015

  • Rigging Supervisor at Kandor Graphics, leading the rigging department through full feature-film production - my first people-leadership role, managing a team of artists and coordinating across animation and tools teams.
  • Senior character TD on major productions including The LEGO Batman Movie and The LEGO Ninjago Movie, before transitioning into software engineering and R&D.

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