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 Technical Recruiter / Research Talent Sourcer to join World Labs and help us build a world-class research and engineering team. In this role, you will own and scale our technical recruiting and sourcing systems, with a particular focus on identifying and engaging top-tier AI researchers and engineers from leading universities and industry labs.
This is a highly operational, systems-driven role that also demands creativity, intuition, and deep curiosity about the AI research ecosystem. You will work closely with founders, research leaders, and hiring managers to translate ambitious research goals into exceptional hires.
What You Will Do:- Design, build, and continuously improve recruiting and sourcing systems, processes, and tooling with an emphasis on rigor, accuracy, and scalability
- Proactively source researchers and engineers from top universities, AI labs, and leading technology companies across ML, robotics, computer vision, and related fields
- Maintain exceptionally high-quality candidate data, pipelines, and documentation across ATS and internal tracking systems
- Develop creative sourcing strategies using publications, citations, open-source work, conference participation, academic networks, and referrals
- Partner closely with research and engineering leaders to deeply understand technical needs, evolving skill requirements, and long-term talent strategy
- Own candidate experience end-to-end, ensuring thoughtful, timely, and highly professional communication
- Analyze recruiting metrics and pipeline data to identify gaps, improve efficiency, and inform hiring decisions
- Support interview coordination and hiring operations as needed to keep processes running smoothly and predictably
- 3+ years of experience in technical recruiting or sourcing, with a strong focus on AI, ML, robotics, or adjacent deep-tech domains
- Demonstrated ability to build and maintain highly organized recruiting systems and processes
- Strong data discipline: comfortable working with pipelines, metrics, and structured tracking to drive decisions
- Solid understanding of the AI research landscape, including top universities, labs, conferences, and industry research teams
- Experience sourcing passive, highly competitive candidates
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Ability to operate effectively in fast-moving, ambiguous environments
While not required, experience in one or more of the following is a strong plus:
- Recruiting or sourcing for research-heavy organizations or frontier AI labs
- Familiarity with academic research signals (publications, citations, arXiv, conferences such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, RSS, etc.)
- Experience hiring PhD-level researchers or highly specialized engineers
- Background in startup environments or early-stage team building
- Experience with advanced sourcing tools, automation, or custom workflows
Who You Are:
- 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
$180,000-$225,000 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 and annual performance bonus
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)
Accommodations & inquiries: [email protected]
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.
