# Cesar Saez > Engineering Leader - Delivery, Developer Productivity & AI-Native Engineering Engineering leader with over 20 years building technology for film and 3D production, currently leading multiple teams across engineering, QA and product. I prototype to make ideas concrete, then build the buy-in that makes them stick. My work has shaped practices well beyond my own teams, from a refinement model adopted across Katana to a company-wide guideline for AI-generated code. - Website: https://www.cesarsaez.com - Contact: London, UK, hi@cesarsaez.com - GitHub: https://github.com/csaez - Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@cesarsaez - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cesarsaez ## Selected Impact - **Delivery:** shipped eight feature releases across Nuke and Katana while splitting a team and absorbing a restructure that doubled my scope. - **Engineering effectiveness:** 3-4x more tickets refined per session, typical code review under two days in two teams, and local builds cut from ~20 min to ~2 min. - **Organisational influence:** practices adopted beyond my teams, including a refinement model used across Katana, AI research ways of working used by four teams, and a company-wide guideline for AI-generated code. - **Leadership development:** grew two engineers into the engineering managers who succeeded me, promoted two to senior, and coached two peer managers. At the CTO's request, I mentor a senior engineer in another product toward management. ## Skills - **Leadership:** Multi-Team Engineering Leadership, Organisation Design, Delivery Systems, Coaching, Hiring - **Effectiveness & AI:** Developer Productivity, AI-Native Engineering, Agent-Ready SDKs - **Technical:** C++, Python, Build Systems, GPU Computing, Machine Learning, OpenUSD ## Experience ### Foundry, London **Engineering Manager, Katana (Lead Software Engineer) | Jul 2025 - Present** - **Lead two engineering teams (~13 people across engineering, QA and product) on Katana, a large C++/Python 3D application used by major film studios.** Shipped Katana 8.5 and 9.0 plus regular maintenance releases, and absorbed a restructure that doubled my scope without missing a release. Promoted an engineer to senior. - **Improved delivery predictability in both teams:** brought typical code-review turnaround under two days with a review-tagging system, and made feature reviews happen every sprint with async video demos instead of meetings. - **Raised tickets refined per session 3-4x with a Feature Facilitator role,** adopted voluntarily by the other two Katana teams: a rotating engineer who prepares upcoming work with product and architecture one sprint ahead. - **Defined Katana's approach to customers building plugins with AI coding agents,** after identifying that our docs and examples were not usable by agents. Wrote the agent-ready SDK strategy, validated it with major studios, and saw its objectives adopted by a director-led AI initiative. - **Drive AI-native engineering beyond my teams:** originated Foundry's guideline for labelling AI-generated code, and co-lead an organisation-wide AI software factory initiative with two peer leaders, now running experiments. - **Removed long-standing productivity bottlenecks across the product:** compiler caching (local builds ~20 min to ~2 min); zero-setup Python IDE and debugger support, closing a 15-year tooling gap; one-click profiling; and an engineering-insights platform over GitLab and Jira. ### Foundry, London **Engineering Manager, AI Research (Lead Software Engineer) | Jul 2022 - Jul 2025** - **Set roadmaps with product, led planning, and presented the group's work to the executive team at quarterly reviews;** designed the research-engineering hiring framework, later adopted by other groups. - **As the group's first engineering leader, split one team into two (~9 people) as demand grew** and established ways of working later adopted by four teams. - **Shipped production machine-learning features across six feature releases of Nuke** (14.0 to 16.0), the industry-standard compositing software, including major expansions of its trainable ML tools and model inference. - **Grew two senior engineers into the engineering managers who succeeded me in leading the group,** one through a year of coaching, one by recognising her readiness and creating room to step up. Promoted another to senior. ### Foundry, London **Senior Software Engineer, Real-Time Research | Sep 2020 - Jul 2022** - **Most senior engineer on Nuke Stage, a real-time virtual-production product, while its direction was still open:** prototyped GPU kernels, application architecture, camera tracking and networking. The shipping product built on this work is now used on live film productions. - **Built the prototype of Nuke's 3D system on OpenUSD** (Pixar's open 3D scene standard) with the lead architect; it was greenlit and matured into what ships today. ### DNEG, London **Software Engineer, R&D | Aug 2019 - Sep 2020** - **Designed and built the asset-resolution layer of the studio's OpenUSD platform,** which locates and loads assets across productions. - **Built pipeline tools used on *Tenet*, *No Time to Die*, and *Fast & Furious 9*.** ### 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 character-rigging team worked,** used on *Captain Marvel*, *The LEGO Movie 2*, and the *Peter Rabbit* series. - **Contributed to one of the first adoptions of OpenUSD at feature-film scale outside Pixar,** solving source-of-truth sync in a pipeline mid-migration and helping design the approach that followed. ### VFX Industry, Multiple Studios **Rigging Supervisor / Lead & Senior Character TD | 2005 - 2016** - **Rigging Supervisor at Kandor Graphics,** leading the character-rigging team through a feature film; Senior Character TD on a decade of released productions. ## Education ### Universidad Central, Chile **B.Sc. in Construction Engineering | 2000 - 2005** Passed with Distinction