2020/21 Recruitment

To complete the team and to be able to further professionalize the Blender project, the following open (paid) job positions have been defined.

The information below is being shared to create transparency in communication. There will probably be questions about this and the process – please comment these here. Ton Roosendaal will reply swiftly.

Note that for none of these jobs formal calls for application have been made yet, recruiting will be done via blender.org eventually. Testing the waters here!

Development Infrastructure Engineer (DevOps)

  • Manage the blender.org infrastructure for developers (including Wiki, docs, blog, chat, etc)
  • Implement and manage automating tasks, such as testing and building.
  • Local job at Blender HQ Amsterdam.

Status: currently finalizing agreement with excellent candidate.

Development Community Coordinator

  • Coordinate and support online activities for every contributor to blender.org; volunteers and professionals alike.
  • Organize on-boarding for new developers.
  • Finding and connecting new talent within Blender projects.
  • Remote job. Preferably: someone in the North American timezone.

Blender UI Developer/Designer

  • Assist developers with visuals, mockups, tools and UI layouts.
  • Keep a close eye on UI and usability guidelines (consistancy, core principes, etc)
  • Preferably: someone with (basic) C and (decent) Python skills.
  • Availability to work at Blender HQ, Amsterdam.

Writer / blogger/ editor

  • Write content for blender.org and Blender Cloud.
  • Should be able to write release logs, articles in the Code blog, press releases and studio production logs.
  • Preferably: video editing skills!
  • Availability to work at Blender HQ, Amsterdam.
  • Part-time possible.

Back-end Web Developer

  • Someone who understands and loves 3D animation (and game) production – the tools and infrastructure needed for it.
  • Manage the Blender Cloud back-end for publishing content.
  • Develop online tools which will be used and shared by the Blender Studio for production.
  • Available to work at Blender HQ, Amsterdam

Blender Foundation/Institute board of directors

This is a 3-5 year target, to appoint a board of directors to build and maintain a sustainable, future proof organization for realizing the mission of Blender.

Recruitment for the operations role will start this year:

  • Operations/Finance director (Dutch resident & Dutch speaking)
  • Technical director (incl. managing industry relations)
  • Creative director (Blender design & UIX, branding, communication, demos/films)

Note: This is not a call for applications yet, it’s to mainly share transparency on what’s to come in the near future. Recruiting will be done via blender.org eventually.

Thanks!

Ton Roosendaal

35 comments
  1. nice open recruitment, very technically specified

  2. Yes am new to this blender app and yes am black and am Nigerian we might come in late but we get all necessary jobs done, I have fallen in love with Blender 2.8 actually we just meet but have other technical web development design fast in learning and processing and creative mind as backup would love to sit on this chair as Back-end Web Developer for you Sir if you give me that opportunity.

  3. Oh, it sound like a dream! Im work now as a designer in Russia. Use Blender since 2013 and know a lot of features. Defenetly want to be an ui designer, but i think i haven’t this mush skills for do that. Can write about and popularize Blender in English and Russian community both. So will be very happy to help the community not only by donations.

  4. ” As part of professionalizing the Blender project … ”
    I have been considering Blender as a professional tool for long time and the quote above put a bitter taste in my mouth unless Ton has another meaning in mind of the word “professionalizing “

    • This is for Blender development; we want to invest in our support level, project structure, standards and practices. That includes on-boarding, tech docs, automatic testing, code reviewing, … but also people who can contribute to high quality software design (what’s between engineering and users).

  5. To be honest, I believe that the first step for Blender to become HUGE is to create a program with official certification for students. I’d love to try and make a certified school in Brazil (my country) but I don’t even know where to start with that. What can you share with me, Mr. Ton, to maybe help with that? Maybe some steps?

    I thank you in advance.

    • There will be no official Blender Foundation certified schools or training centers.

      I prefer education and certification to happen independently of the foundation.

      Further: our goal is to make Blender. We also make docs and provide lots of examples and demos. Fantastic material for any teacher to bring in their classes and train students useful skills.

      • @ton

        > There will be no official Blender Foundation certified schools or training centers.

        > I prefer education and certification to happen independently of the foundation.

        > Further: our goal is to make Blender. We also make docs and provide lots of examples and demos. Fantastic material for any teacher to bring in their classes and train students useful skills.

        This is something I’m looking at further down the line.

  6. Recruitment – this is just awesome! I would like to attend to ui designer position. I already have near half of redesigned blender interface in adobe xd / sketch / figma. Including icons.

  7. Recruitment – this is just awesome! I would like to attend to ui designer position. I already have near half of redesigned blender interface in adobe xd / sketch / figma.

  8. For the UI Developer/Designer position, I would strongly recommend looking for someone with usability testing experience.

    I headed up the usability testing lab at Nintendo Technology Development for a little over a year, and that was one of the most humbling experiences of my life: designs that I swore would be intuitive and easy to use would frequently confuse actual users when we put it in their hands. And even when we updated our designs based on user feedback, other users would often then be confused.

    What I took away from that was a sense of humility and skepticism about my own ideas, as well as a healthy skepticism of ideas in general that seem logical at the time and look good on paper. And I think that’s a critical trait in a UI/UX designer, and is also a trait that’s difficult to develop without that kind of testing experience.

    To be clear, outside of the production projects that Blender Animation Studio already does, I don’t expect much (or any) user testing to be done. With something like Blender, how things play out on a longer timeline is more important than whether a new user can jump into it within minutes. And typical focused testing is strongly biased towards “new users in the first X minutes” kinds of results. But finding someone with that kind of testing experience would IMO nevertheless be very valuable because of the perspective shift it can bring.

    • People who can do UX design by themselves amaze me. I always have to have a tight feedback loop with testers and other teammates.

  9. Ton,

    Jim (Unites States) here – very interested in the community dev coord role! Let me know how I can help as needed! Thanks!

  10. That is great! Blender it is growing a lot in these recent years. I would love to help writing content for blender (I have done this for some years). When the job is open, I will apply for sure. Also, love to move to Amsterdam ASAP! hahaha

  11. Very interesting and open idea, congratulations!

    Besides already mentioned positions, is there any thought or idea about how to disseminate and educate Blender? What about collaboration with schools and universities?

    Blender is mainly for artists (I know, I know), but what about the scientists and researchers? What about academic/scientific hi-ed relations? Lot’s of professionals are using Blender in science, for science in vast number of areas, maybe there will be place for somebody who can join artistic and professional/technical worlds?

    • Education (books, tutorials, art websites, courses, markets, etc) is free for the community to organize and to participate in. Works very well. Teachers, schools or universities should seize the opportunity. Not sure what’s holding them back so much… missing a platform maybe?

      • Some do. Paris-8 is famously pro-FLOSS, for instance — both the graphics and the audio/music departments. What kind of a platform would you imagine?

  12. Ah, interesting job as blogger. Using Blender since 2009. Write some tutorial using Bahasa Indonesia

    Not 3D artist, but still use Blender as video editor on Linux Mint Machine. Can’t wait for the opening jobs recruitment :))

  13. For the Blender UI Developer/Designer, please don’t hire a Blender fanboy like there are by hundreds on the forums with horrible noob ideas that have no clue about about how things work outside their Blender amateur world…

    It needs to be someone with strong UI design experience from solid industry standard softwares that have acclaimed UIs (not the UI designer from Pixologic by example).

    • The ideal candidate should have several years of industry experience spread across multiple companies or software products (it goes without saying that large open source projects count as experience here) and preferably across more than one discipline or field. In other words I mean someone who has not been inside a bubble only doing UI/UX for film (VFX), or only doing games (or tools for games), or only doing parametric CAD, or only doing data/medical rendering, etc..

      That requirement would (defacto) exclude anyone who has only ever worked in Blender or who has only ever worked in a single Autodesk or Pixar product (or name any other single piece of software here). I really believe that a cross-discipline background is a necessity because it will take someone with that experience of not only software packages but also fields to distill a holistic design that is responsive to the needs of the many different disciplines that Blender serves.

      Someone who has only ever worked in the narrow bubble of a single software package or (especially) only a single discipline has a limited understanding of other people’s needs and may reject ideas out of hand because they don’t conform to their own narrow experience and conceptions of ‘how things should work’. We need someone who can build bridges, not burn them.

      • One man is not enough, he’ll need to work with a team of artists which he should listen to, specially those artists with experience in several 3d packages. ✌

        • Or she !

        • Agreed. We don’t want Blender’s UI to become someone’s personal fiefdom, hence the “build bridges, not burn them” comment, because outreach, teamwork, and accepting feedback will be critical to achieving success.

    • The only 3d app with acclaimed UI is c4d. hahaha Nothing comes close..

      • The only one that talks about C4D interface is you and your fake accounts to give likes to your posts, how many accounts do you create last time? four? XD

    • Right! Nothing against the fans though, they’re essential for our community – also as future contributors. We just lack contributors with industry experience to complete the picture.

  14. As much as I’d love to work in Amsterdam, I am not sure my spouse would want to move from Canada. I’ll keep an eye on the writer position, as I have the previous experience and the video editing. Perhaps remote will be acceptable during the pandemic. Or part-time remote? :)

  15. The back-end developer position doesn’t specify, but it that position available for remote work?

  16. Please, this is not a call for applications yet. Will be done on blender.org/jobs/ later.

  17. Hi Ton!! Yosue Santiago, from México. What would be the profile for Development Community Coordinator? I am very interested in the position. Tank you very much in advance for your attention.

    • My preferred profile for all jobs is 5+ years of experience in a similar position (i.e. working on open source, or working for 3D software bizz). I would like to work with people we can look up to and who bring in new ideas based on well developed skills and experience.

      • 3D like Solidworks will also work as I’m a beginner to Blender and have expertise in developing 3D Models with SW & AutoCad.
        Very keen to learn Blender , Please consider!

  18. Hello Blender folks,
    I’m very interested on the designer job position, i’m a Blender user since 2.49 and this would be a dream come true.
    I’m currently employed, and i work on the advertisement industry.

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