Senior Product Engineer (Tech Lead)

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

Job summary

World Labs seeks a Senior Product Engineer who bridges product and engineering. You will own features end-to-end, building responsive web apps and backend services with a player-coach mindset.

You will partner with product management to shape technical roadmaps and sprint plans, bringing leadership in both software development and user-focused design. You will ship user-facing applications and developer tooling across frontend, backend, and workflow design, focusing on performant, scalable

Qualifications

• 6+ years of software engineering with end-to-end ownership and shipped user-facing products.
• Strong frontend skills (TypeScript/React) and backend service understanding.
• Familiar with asynchronous, long-latency or streaming APIs.
• Ability to design end-to-end product features with strong UX.
• Experience guiding technical roadmaps and sprint execution.

Responsibilities

• Partner with product leadership on architectural decisions, sprint planning, and execution.
• Ship frontend and backend features end-to-end and design workflows.
• Build workflows around generative models with streaming results and caching.
• Own deliverables, ensure quality, performance, and maintainability.
• Collaborate with users and design partners, instrument and iterate quickly.

Skills

TypeScript

React

Web architecture

AI workflows

Async APIs

CS fundamentals

Frontend/backend

End-to-end ownership

Tools

WebGL

Three.js

Job description

About World Labs:

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 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 Opportunity & Pay Transparency

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)