Earlier this year Autodesk acquired The Wild along with its own recent acquisition, IrisVR, and their Prospect platform for XR collaboration. This was really exciting news for those of us who believe VR/AR/MR to be hugely interesting technologies with significant potential to impact our customers’ workflows. To review, here’s a 10-minute video showing how The Wild works:
Of course this isn’t the first time Autodesk has focused serious resources on developing XR solutions: the first was in the late 80s/early 90s, with the Cyberspace Developer Kit, while another was around 5 years ago with our former (VR-capable) game engine, Stingray, and the Revit Live feature that made use it. And that’s not forgetting the excellent VRED product, which also provides compelling, collaborative VR experiences for our manufacturing customers (and was used to build this really cool automotive configurator, back around the time VR started to become interesting again).
So why should this attempt succeed, where others (although not all, as VRED is still going strong) have failed? One reason I have to be confident is that the overall group is being headed by Nic Fonta and its engineering team by Sebastian Casallas, both of whom have solid backgrounds in this space. And that’s not even considering the depth of talent that has joined us from The Wild – including Gabe Paez, its CEO and founder, as Head of XR Products.
There’s also the question of XR hardware, which is now much more accessible, and still evolving quickly. Gone are the days when you needed to have a dedicated VR room (yes, I do miss ours, though) as Meta’s Quest 2 delivers an incredible, untethered, roomscale VR experience without the pain of additional hardware. And that’s not to mention the MR hardware that’s already quite decent with the Hololens 2, and is likely to get even more interesting when Apple finally unveils their own XR offering.
We’ve also evolved our own engineering approach for developing XR solutions for the AEC space. We’re now using external game engine technology that has been battle-hardened for XR workflows: there might have been a time where it made sense for us to roll our own – such as with Stingray – but that time has definitely now passed. Using an external engine allows us to focus on key customer workflows rather than developing core (increasingly commoditized) technology.
If you’re interested in joining this effort, Sebastian is seeking to fill a number of positions in his team: he’s currently looking for two Senior C++ XR Engineers and one Senior Backend Engineer.
Here’s the introduction that’s common to the three job postings:
Virtual and augmented reality are transforming design and creation through new immersive and collaborative experiences that will impact how major segments like entertainment, architecture, engineering, construction, and manufacturing converge. The industry is being transformed by XR technology growth, creating new ways of working to review, collaborate and create.
In this role, you will be part of the AR/VR/MR (XR) team responsible for building and delivering XR workflows to the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction industry (AEC). This multi-disciplinary team is operating in a start-up mode within Autodesk with autonomy on product of course, but also sales, strategy, marketing, and operations. In this role, you will be reporting to the XR Software Engineering Manager.
You have a passion for XR? You are excited about contributing directly to the future of XR at Autodesk and make a difference for our customers? Working in a dynamic environment where you are expected to share your opinion and contribute directly to the success of a novel product using the latest technology seems exciting to you? If so, we want to talk with you.
Here are the postings for these jobs, on both LinkedIn and Autodesk’s Careers site:
- Senior C++ XR Engineer | LinkedIn | Autodesk Careers
- Senior C++ XR Engineer | LinkedIn | Autodesk Careers
- Senior Backend Engineer | LinkedIn | Autodesk Careers
All of these positions are remote-friendly, with candidates ideally located somewhere in North America to keep the team’s timezone overlap significant.
Sebastian is looking for people who want to help build the future of XR at Autodesk, working with game engines, modern backend technologies and large datasets, and collaborating with a team of passionate and smart engineers, designers and Product Managers. If this sounds appealing to you, then please apply today!
(I fully expect this team to grow over time, too, so if these specific roles don’t quite fit your profile, be sure to check our careers site – searching on “XR” should do it – regularly, as other positions will be posted there.)
