This probably isn't the best place, but I am looking for information/references for the best pipelines in VFX studios?

That is such a confusing question to ask, but for the sake of others who are reading this forum I will offer my thoughts. A pipeline for what? Rendering, set design, character animation, sims, texturing? Pre-vis? Compositing? For the VFX studio, the pipeline (if you get an offer from the producer to take a job on the VFX) is checking the brief(script/story-reel)->R&D->prototypes->tests->approval->fine tuning->delivery. And it is most likely every single time tailored to the specific project/client by a pipeline designer professional and under a fat NDA disclosure. Why do you imagine that on the public forum would someone share such details? Or you don't, since you already said it is probably not a best place to ask. (like, how is that related to Houdini, other than being a dcc as one of the components of the pipeline)
I suggest to check from studio to studio with your portfolio and try to work for them, if you want to learn a real deal of business (and if they let you). If you are curious enough and from now on become clever in asking information without exposing someone to breach the nda, you might end up designing pipelines yourself, in order to optimize the workload on artists/coders. And that makes the difference between a freelancer and fully developed studio with a big catalogue. There are no tailored solutions, only clever people who are motivated to deliver the product as fast as possible and that is the competition - who is faster, because, from the quality point, we are all using, more or less, the same tools. And in the future maybe the AI will design a pipelines for us, but I am a bit worried of too efficient optimizing because my experience tells me it usually breaks over the labor's back.

You will probably never get a useful answer to this question, certainly not publicly. At best you might get a bunch of personal opinions, but legally no one will be able to provide any real details. And as Drasko mentioned, not all facilities have the same needs or even deliver the same kinds of VFX anyway.

It's weird, why don't we talk about pipelines. We talk about every effect under the sun and you bet that more than one hip file or script has crossed studios. Pipes are interesting in their own right and with PDG it creeps into Houdini discussions already. There's nothing magical about pipelines but a lot of obscurity and gatekeeping. Maybe this isn't forum for it but OP is curious and shows interest and I can't blame him/her for that.

pipeline is a tricky thing that is mostly a inhouse production process that is in the detail mostly not public. except blender foundation projects where you can get story's and project files.

there are some youtube videos or snippets for how the concept is or how the build it.
we also can say thanks to some openness we are getting more and more tooling to build a custom pipeline today with less man power.

Modeling Quality controlling: https://vimeo.com/286243269 [vimeo.com]
What is a pipeline: https://www.cgspectrum.com/blog/the-visual-effects-pipeline [www.cgspectrum.com]
some videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJAhptBycJw&list=PLdbCjIV0Pl9CzHH43UNOrnZ8DavM7sIX3 [www.youtube.com]