We build foundational world models that can perceive, generate, reason, and interact with the 3D world — unlocking AI's full potential through spatial intelligence by transforming seeing into doing, perceiving into reasoning, and imagining into creating. We believe spatial intelligence will unlock new forms of storytelling, creativity, design, simulation, and immersive experiences across both virtual and physical worlds. We bring together a world-class team, united by a shared curiosity, passion, and deep backgrounds in technology — from AI research to systems engineering to product design — creating a tight feedback loop between our cutting-edge research and products that empower our users.
Role OverviewWe’re looking for a Senior Product Engineer who thrives at the intersection of product and engineering. You should have strong coding skills across the stack, a deep appreciation for intuitive user experiences, and the technical expertise to design end-to-end systems. In this role, you’ll own product features end-to-end—from ideation through to building responsive, user-centric web apps and backend services. Serving as a "player-coach," you will act as the engineering counterpart to product management to help with technical roadmapping and sprint execution. You will bring crucial software engineering and technical leadership experience to support a highly talented product team that currently leans heavily on design.
What You Will Do:- Partner directly with product leadership on architectural decisions, sprint planning and technical execution.
- Ship focused, user-facing applications and developer tooling end-to-end, owning frontend, backend, and workflow design.
- Design and build complex workflows around generative models: chained and parallel generation calls, long-running async operations, streaming results, caching, retries, and graceful degradation around inference that takes seconds to minutes.
- Own the deliverable: you set and hold the quality bar for what ships under your name - correctness, performance, polish, and maintainability - and you review others' work to the same standard.
- Work directly with users and design partners; instrument what you ship, watch it get used, and iterate fast.
- 6+ years of software engineering experience (8+ for Staff), with a track record of end-to-end ownership. You've shipped user-facing products, not just components of them, and you've been accountable for their quality in production.
- Deep proficiency in modern web application technologies for the frontend (e.g., TypeScript, React) and backend services, with a strong understanding of web architecture; especially in interactive and real-time applications with performance considerations.
- Fluency with AI-assisted development workflows, grounded in fundamentals strong enough to verify, correct, and own everything you ship — you use the tools to move faster, not to outsource judgment.
- Experience building products on top of asynchronous, long-latency, or streaming APIs.
- A product-minded approach: you form opinions about what users need, validate them cheaply, and change course on evidence.
- Excellent problem-solving abilities and a strong foundation in computer science principles.
While not required, experience in one or more of the following is a strong plus:
- Experience in 3D graphics programming and shader development, particularly web frameworks such as WebGL and three.js.
- Experience building applications around generative image, video, or 3D AI models.
- Contributions to open-source graphics or machine learning projects.
- Experience working in VFX, gaming, 3D design, or other industries that focus on high-fidelity visual outputs.
- Fearless Innovator: We need people who thrive on challenges and aren't afraid to tackle the impossible.
- Resilient Builder: Impacting Large World Models isn't a sprint; it's a marathon with hurdles. We're looking for builders who can weather the storms of groundbreaking research and come out stronger.
- Mission-Driven Mindset: Everything we do is in service of creating the best spatially intelligent AI systems, and using them to empower people.
- Collaborative Spirit: We're building something bigger than any one person. We need team players who can harness the power of collective intelligence.
We're hiring the brightest minds from around the globe to bring diverse perspectives to our cutting-edge work. If you're ready to work on technology that will reshape how machines perceive and interact with the world, World Labs is your launchpad.
Join us, and let's make history together.
Equal Employment Opportunity
World Labs is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable law. We welcome all qualified applicants and are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the hiring process upon request.
California Pay Transparency
In accordance with California law, we disclose the following:
Pay Range
$250-$325k base salary (good-faith estimate for San Francisco Bay Area upon hire; actual offer based on experience, skills, and qualifications)
Total Compensation
Base salary plus equity awards
Salary History
We do not request or consider prior compensation in making offers
Compliance: Cal. Lab. Code §432.3 (pay scale disclosure & salary history ban); Cal. Lab. Code §1197.5 (Equal Pay Act); Cal. Gov. Code §12940 (FEHA); 42 U.S.C. §2000e (Title VII); 29 U.S.C. §621 (ADEA); 42 U.S.C. §12101 (ADA)
Skills Required
- 6+ years of engineering experience and ability to operate effectively in startup environments
- Strong track record in developing and shipping successful products
- Experience building user-focused web applications
- Proficiency in modern web frontend and backend technologies (e.g., TypeScript, React, Node.js) and web architecture
- Experience and strong curiosity in working with AI tools
- Excellent problem-solving abilities and strong computer science fundamentals
- Strong communication and collaboration skills
- Experience in 3D graphics programming and shader development (WebGL, three.js)
- Experience with generative AI, machine learning, or neural rendering
- Contributions to open-source graphics or machine learning projects
- Experience building real-time collaborative tools and applications
- Experience in VFX, gaming, 3D design, or high-fidelity visual industries
What We Do
World Labs is a spatial intelligence company building Large World Models (LWMs) to perceive, generate, and interact with the 3D world. We aim to lift AI models from the 2D plane of pixels to full 3D worlds – both virtual and real – endowing them with spatial intelligence as rich as our own. We believe that humans are innovative, curious, and creative; science and technology are both manifestations and drivers of these impulses. Propelling AI forward with spatial intelligence will also propel forward both individuals and humanity as a whole. Toward this goal, World Labs will develop spatially intelligent LWMs that can understand and reason about the 3D world from images and other modalities. Over time, we expect to train increasingly powerful models with broader capabilities that can be applied in a variety of domains, working alongside people. These are ambitious goals, so we are building an ambitious company to tackle them. Our team, led by co-founders Fei-Fei Li, PhD; Justin Johnson, PhD; Christoph Lassner, PhD; and Ben Mildenhall, PhD, has a strong research background, but we are not motivated by exploration for its own sake. Instead, we believe that now is a unique moment where rapid scientific progress has thinned the barrier between research and applications. We aim to seize this opportunity, focusing on the entire throughline from research to engineering to product to people. We are bringing together the most formidable slate of pixel talent ever assembled, creating a tight feedback loop between our spatially intelligent foundation models and products that will empower our users. We invite you to learn more about joining our fast-growing team. You can find open positions at jobs.ashbyhq.com/worldlabs.
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