Roles and Hiring Plan
Roles needed to run the Pipeline Map, grouped by how Augmented Traveler should fill them. Skills for each role are in Technical Skills Matrix. FTE figures are for season one (studio setup plus the Maria Mitchell production) and follow Specification — Full-Body Historical Virtual Human §6.1 and Nantucket Common Pipeline §7.
Current team: two founders in different cities: the CEO covers the executive-producer role and the CTO covers the technical-director role below. Each position now has its own note in roles/positions/, with roll-out, skills, requirements and remote rates; costs are in Year One Budget — Personnel.
1. Core hires (employees or long-term contracts)
The first five hires carry the engine that every later character reuses.
| # | Role | FTE (season 1) | Owns | Pipeline stages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Executive producer | 1.0 | Schedule, budget, partners, cutoff and label policy | 0, 8, 9 |
| 2 | Technical director / pipeline TD | 1.0 | Engine version lock, repo, build farm, per-platform packaging, tool choices | 2–7 |
| 3 | Character artist (MetaHuman / Maya) | 1.0 | Likeness, Mesh to MetaHuman, skin, props, Cine and Optimized assemblies | 2 |
| 4 | Unreal engineer (gameplay/systems) | 1.0 | Event state machine, program clock, kiosk app, Pixel Streaming 2, Sequencer integration | 6, 7 |
| 5 | AI / conversation engineer | 0.75–1.0 | Retrieval, policy layer, LLM integration, speech in/out, logging, evaluation harness | 5, 9 |
| 6 | Conversation designer / narrative writer | 0.5 | Question bank, refusals, monologue scripts, Chautauqua beats | 1, 5, 6 |
| 7 | Technical animator / rigger | 0.5–1.0 | MetaHuman Animator solves, Control Rig, gesture library, idles, Maya cleanup | 4 |
2. Specialists to contract per production
| Role | Typical engagement | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Historian of record (one per figure) | 0.2–0.4 FTE for the production, then quarterly log review | Veto on all text. Paid, named on credits. |
| Corpus editor / archivist | 6–12 weeks | Transcription, shelf marks, corpus A/B/C separation. |
| Groom artist | 3–6 weeks | Period hair and beards; strand for kiosk, cards for headsets. Often where cheap builds fail. |
| Costume designer + cloth artist | 4–8 weeks | Period research with NHA textiles; Marvelous Designer / CLO to MetaHuman Outfits. |
| Environment artist | 6–10 weeks per room | Vestal House, ship's cabin, Atheneum hall. Reused as "place kits." |
| XR engineer | 0.5 FTE during packaging | Quest/Vive/Android XR/OpenXR, performance, comfort, MDM kiosk setup. Can be hire #8 in season two. |
| Mobile AR engineer | 0.25–0.5 FTE | ARKit/RealityKit and ARCore, or Unity AR Foundation; USDZ/glTF postcards; geospatial or image anchors. |
| visionOS developer | Project-based | Only if Vision Pro mixed reality is in scope (Swift/RealityKit or Unity PolySpatial). |
| Mocap technician / studio | 2–5 capture days | Suit or optical stage; solve and retarget. |
| Voice director + dialect coach | 1–2 weeks | Casting, voice bible sessions. |
| Actors (body, face, voice) | Capture weeks + pickups | Contract covers every surface and future retraining. |
| Sound designer | 2–4 weeks | Room tone, spatial audio, caption timing. |
| Kiosk / AV integrator | Per venue | Display, PC, mic array, camera, enclosure, network, remote access. |
| UX and accessibility designer | 2–4 weeks | Captions, kiosk height, seated VR, contrast, children's cut. |
| QA tester | 0.25 FTE near launch | Device matrix, red-team prompts, regression after corpus changes. |
| DevOps / cloud engineer | Part-time | Inference hosting, Pixel Streaming instances, logging, school allowlists. |
3. From partners or advisors
| Role | Source |
|---|---|
| Institution producer (room, insurance, docents) | MMA, NHA, Atheneum, MAAH staff |
| Rights counsel | One firm on retainer for the season |
| Second historian (blind review) | NHA Research Fellows or university partner |
| Community and descendant reviewers | As each figure requires |
| Log editor | Can combine conversation designer + historian after opening |
| Marketing and press | Studio producer with partner communications teams |
4. Hiring order
| When | Hire or contract |
|---|---|
| Month 0 | Executive producer, technical director |
| Month 1 | Historian of record (contract), corpus editor, AI/conversation engineer, conversation designer |
| Month 2 | Character artist, technical animator, costume and groom contractors |
| Month 3 | Unreal engineer, environment artist |
| Months 4–5 | Voice director, actors, mocap days, sound designer |
| Months 6–7 | XR engineer, mobile AR engineer, kiosk integrator, QA, accessibility |
| Month 9 | Log editor duty begins at soft open |
5. Roles the Specification did not list
- Technical director / pipeline TD: needed now that the pipeline spans Maya, MetaHuman, Unreal, possibly Unity, and six device families.
- Groom artist and environment artist as separate seats.
- DevOps / cloud engineer for inference, streaming and logs.
- visionOS developer, if Vision Pro mixed reality is pursued.
- Device fleet / venue operations: someone owns headset charging, MDM enrollment and kiosk reboots each open day.
Next: Technical Skills Matrix