At all of the studios where I've interviewed for either tools jobs or R&D jobs, C++ seems to be lingua franca. Knowing Python is basically a plus, but not taken

At all of the studios where I've interviewed for either tools jobs or R&D jobs, C++ seems to be lingua franca. Knowing Python is basically a plus, but not taken seriously. For example, I used to work on portfolio construction systems that were written in a mix of Python and Cython. So while I typically list Python as my main programming language, this is far from just the dynamic typing stuff. I know more than I ever expected to about the CPython implementation and using the CPython API from Cython, writing extremely performant extension types and extension classes, wrapping pre-existing C libraries and exposing them, with no performance degradation, through easy to use Python APIs, and a number of related skills. This has universally been a complete non-starter. I even studied computer vision in grad school and have some specialized experience with bi-directional reflectance functions, GPU optical flow estimation algorithms, and face detection. Having no previous job experience in C++ has always been a literally instantaneous deal-breaker regardless. It's actually caused me to give up hope and just stop applying to VFX roles all together.