World Labs https://www.worldlabs.ai/ 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 https://profiles.stanford.edu/fei-fei-li, Justin Johnson https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-johnson-41b43664/ and Ben Mildenhall https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-mildenhall-86b4739b/, the company is pioneering world models that perceive, generate, reason, and interact with virtual and physical worlds.

The company’s flagship product, Marble https://marble.worldlabs.ai/, transforms text, images, and video into fully navigable 3D worlds, unlocking applications across gaming, film, architecture, robotics, and immersive digital experiences. Backed by leading investors and with over $1B raised, World Labs is assembling a world-class team at the intersection of AI research and real-world deployment.

ROLE OVERVIEW

We are seeking a Senior/Staff Rendering Systems Engineer to build and scale high-throughput, Unreal Engine–based rendering systems for synthetic data generation.

You will own the low-level rendering and GPU performance work required to run many-world rendering efficiently across cloud GPU fleets. You will profile end-to-end workloads, diagnose performance/IO bottlenecks, and implement production-quality C++ and CUDA systems within and around Unreal Engine. You will also partner with infrastructure and data teams to scale distributed execution and integrate the renderer with internal simulation and data pipelines.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

- Deep experience modifying Unreal Engine’s renderer to support run independent worlds or cameras across GPUs and build the cloud job-orchestration layer

- Maximize hardware throughput and GPU efficiency via custom parallelization, caching strategies, and high-performance interconnect communication.

- Integrate rendering system seamlessly with proprietary internal toolchains and data pipelines.

- Perform rigorous profiling, roofline analysis, and root-cause diagnosis to resolve compute and I/O limits.

- Collaborate with research teams to accelerate experimental iteration and enhance system robustness at scale.

KEY QUALIFICATIONS

Strong candidates must demonstrate mastery in low-level Unreal rendering architecture and GPU programming. While broad experience on distributed multi-GPU compute are highly valued, core graphics performance engineering remains the primary prerequisite.

- Strong background in performance engineering, including telemetry profiling, roofline analysis, latency/throughput optimization, and systematic root-cause analysis.

- Deep understanding of Unreal rendering stack, familiar with its codebase at platform-agnostic rendering layer, the command lists abstract layer, and the RHI abstraction layer, alongside practical experience customizing engine source at various layers and shader pipelines. Familiar with its GPU resource lifetime and synchronization, as well as async compute.

- Working knowledge of Nanite, Lumen, and associated graphics debugging suites.

- Advanced low-level GPU optimization skills (CUDA/Vulkan), with emphasis on kernel-level tuning, memory hierarchy management, and memory bandwidth efficiency.

- High proficiency in C++, CUDA, Python (and possibly Rust), accompanied by practical Vulkan implementation experience.

- Proficiency in rendering material adjustment and custom shader development pipelines.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

- 3-4+ years of engineering experience within AI research labs, machine learning enterprises, or robotics and autonomous vehicle organizations.

- Familiarity with distributed data interconnects and collective communications primitives (e.g., NVLink, NCCL); A strong plus, but not a substitute for the core skills above.

- Proven track record deploying or serving large-scale generative, diffusion, spatial, or video foundation models.

- Hands-on creation of performance-profiling, telemetry, and observability toolchains for real-time graphics pipelines and GPU workloads.

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 - then World Labs is your launchpad.

Join us, and let's make history together.

Logistics:

Location: This role is based in San Francisco, California; we work in-person in the office 5 days a week.

Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the visa process together.

Benefits: We offer generous health, dental, vision and 401K benefits, flexible PTO, paid parental leave, and relocation support as needed.

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.