Senior Product Engineer (Tech Lead)

World Labs; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 250,000 - 325,000; Full time

Job summary

World Labs is seeking a Senior Product Engineer in San Francisco to own end-to-end product features, from ideation to scalable web apps and backend services. You will act as a player-coach between product and engineering, leading architectural decisions and sprint execution.

You will design complex workflows around generative models, with emphasis on fast iteration, user-centric UX, and robust engineering practices to ensure quality, performance, and maintainability.

Qualifications

• Six plus years of software engineering experience with end-to-end ownership.
• Proficiency in modern web frontend technologies (TypeScript/React) and backend services with strong web-architecture knowledge.
• Fluency in AI-assisted development workflows and ability to verify and own shipped work.
• Experience building products on asynchronous, long-latency, or streaming APIs.

Responsibilities

• Partner with product leadership on architectural decisions, sprint planning and technical execution.
• Ship focused, user-facing applications and developer tooling end-to-end across frontend, backend and workflow design.
• Design and build complex workflows around generative models with streaming, caching, retries and graceful degradation.
• Own deliverables, maintain high quality, performance and maintainability, and review colleagues' work to the same standard.
• Engage with users and design partners, instrument what you ship and iterate quickly.

Skills

TypeScript

React

Backend development

Web architecture

AI-assisted workflows

Asynchronous APIs

Streaming APIs

3D graphics

Shader development

Open-source contributions

Tools

WebGL

three.js

Job description

About World Labs

World Labs is a frontier AI research and product company advancing spatial intelligence, the next frontier beyond large language models. Co-founded by Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Justin Johnson and Ben Mildenhall, the company is pioneering world models that perceive, generate, reason, and interact with virtual and physical worlds.

Role Overview

We’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.

Key Qualifications

• 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.

Preferred Qualifications

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.

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.

Compensation Range: $250K - $325K