Research Scientist Intern, Spatial Reasoning & Localization (PhD)

Meta; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 85,000 - 141,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equal employment opportunity

Accommodation support

Job summary

Meta Reality Labs seeks a Research Scientist Intern in Spatial Reasoning & Localization (PhD). You will research, prototype, and evaluate compact vision-language models that extract spatial evidence and localize against structured maps of indoor/outdoor environments.

Collaboration with researchers and engineers will push forward AR/VR localization capabilities. Ideal candidates are PhD students in CS/EE with experience in vision, ML, VLMs, or visual localization, and proficiency in C++/Python

Qualifications

• PhD candidate in computer science, electrical engineering, or related fields.
• Experience in computer vision, machine learning, vision-language models, or visual localization.
• Strong publication track record in top conferences and familiarity with modern C++/Python.

Responsibilities

• Research and prototype advanced technologies in computer vision and multimodal ML.
• Deliver publishable results with direct impact on Reality Labs products.
• Build datasets, metrics and benchmarks for localization accuracy, latency and cost.
• Analyze efficiency, accuracy, scalability and stability of deployed tech.
• Collaborate across research, prototyping and product deployment lifecycles.

Skills

C++

Python

Computer Vision

PyTorch

Education

PhD candidate in CS/EE

Tools

PyTorch

Job description

Meta Reality Labs brings together researchers and engineers to invent the future of visual computing. Our teams develop technologies that enable people to capture, create, understand, and interact with immersive visual experiences across Meta’s products and AR/VR platforms. We work at the intersection of artificial intelligence, computer vision, multimodal language models, and maps. Our research spans localization, vision-language models, scene text and landmark understanding, and spatial reasoning grounded in maps and floor plans, so that devices such as AI glasses can understand where people are, indoors and outdoors.As a Research Scientist Intern, you will help advance the state of the art in a fast, lightweight VLM driven visual localizer that reasons over semantic and geometric evidence in images and structured map representations, estimating where the image was taken: the place, the floor, and the camera's position and heading.You will collaborate with researchers and engineers to develop new models, representations, datasets, and evaluation methods—with opportunities to publish your work and influence future products used by people around the world.

Research Scientist Intern, Spatial Reasoning & Localization (PhD) Responsibilities:

• Research, develop and prototype advanced technologies in the domain of Computer Vision, Multimodal Machine Learning, and Visual Localization, such as compact vision-language models that extract structured spatial evidence from images and localize them against structured map representations of indoor and outdoor environments.
• Deliver research results that are both publishable and have a direct impact on Reality Labs or Meta’s Family of Apps.
• Build datasets, metrics, and benchmarks for localization accuracy, latency, and cost, and compare against frontier vision-language models.
• Analyze the efficiency, accuracy, scalability, and stability of currently deployed technologies to identify opportunities for impact through novel research.
• Collaborate with team members throughout the lifetime of a project, from research to prototyping to deploying products.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Currently is in the process of obtaining a PhD degree in computer science, electrical engineering, or related fields
• Experience in one or more areas of Computer Science, such as Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Vision-Language Models, Visual Localization
• Proven track record of achieving significant results as demonstrated by grants, fellowships, patents, as well as co-authored publications at top-tier conferences such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, or ICML
• Experience with modern C++ and/or Python
• Experience with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch

Preferred Qualifications:

• Intent to return to their degree program after the completion of the internship
• Interpersonal experience: cross-group and cross-culture collaboration
• Strong communication skills and ability to convey research ideas to a broad audience
• Research experience in visual localization, visual place recognition, image geolocalization, scene text recognition, or camera pose estimation
• Mathematical background in linear algebra, numerical optimization, and probabilistic estimation, and understanding of 3D geometry and camera models
• Experience training or fine-tuning vision-language models, including distillation, reinforcement learning, or efficient inference (for example quantization or structured outputs)
• Familiarity with map and place data, floor plans, or positioning signals such as GPS and Wi-Fi
• Relevant research or software engineering work experiences, including internship, work experience, coding competitions, or widely used contributions in open source repositories

About Meta:

Meta builds technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world. Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology. People who choose to build their careers by building with us at Meta help shape a future that will take us beyond what digital connection makes possible today—beyond the constraints of screens, the limits of distance, and even the rules of physics.

Meta is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and Aff…We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Meta participates in the E-Verify program in certain locations, as required by law. Please note that Meta may leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in connection with applications for employment.

Meta is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please let us know at [e-mail].

$7,650/month to $12,667/month + benefits

Individual compensation is determined by skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Compensation details listed in this posting reflect the base hourly rate, monthly rate, or annual salary only, and do not include bonus, equity or sales incentives, if applicable. In addition to base compensation, Meta offers benefits. Learn more about benefits at Meta.