Research Engineer / Scientist (3D Reconstruction)

Job Application for Research Engineer / Scientist (3D Reconstruction) at World Labs Back to jobs Research Engineer / Scientist (3D Reconstruction) San Francisco Apply 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 3D Reconstruction Specialist to develop and advance state-of-the-art methods for reconstructing high-quality 3D geometry and appearance from real-world data. This role is focused on modern reconstruction techniques—both feed-forward and optimization-based—with an emphasis on novel representations, robust optimization, and scalable training and inference pipelines. This is a hands-on, research-driven role for someone who enjoys working at the intersection of computer vision, graphics, and machine learning. You’ll collaborate closely with research scientists, ML engineers, and product teams to translate cutting-edge reconstruction ideas into production-ready systems that power core product capabilities. What You Will Do: Design and implement modern 3D reconstruction systems, including feed-forward and optimization-based approaches for geometry, appearance, and scene understanding. Research, prototype, and productionize advanced 3D representations (e.g., implicit functions, point-based or volumetric methods, hybrid representations) with a focus on accuracy, efficiency, and scalability. Develop and improve optimization pipelines for multi-view reconstruction, including camera pose estimation, joint geometry/appearance optimization, and robust loss formulations. Build end-to-end training and evaluation workflows for 3D reconstruction models, from data preparation and supervision strategies to large-scale experiments and metrics. Collaborate with data and infrastructure teams to ensure reconstruction methods integrate cleanly with existing 3D data pipelines, rendering systems, and downstream applications. Analyze failure modes and data quality issues in real-world reconstruction scenarios, and design principled solutions to improve robustness and generalization. Optimize performance across the stack, including memory usage, training speed, and inference latency, to support large-scale datasets and production constraints. Contribute to technical direction by proposing new research ideas, mentoring teammates, and helping set best practices for 3D reconstruction across the organization. Key Qualifications: 6+ years of experience working on 3D reconstruction, multi-view geometry, or related areas in computer vision, graphics, or machine learning. Strong foundation in modern 3D reconstruction techniques, including feed-forward neural methods or optimization-based approaches. Deep experience with 3D representations and their tradeoffs (e.g., implicit fields, point-based methods, meshes, volumes) or with large-scale optimization pipelines for reconstruction. Proficiency in Python and/or C++, with hands-on experience building research or production systems. Experience with deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch) and numerical optimization tools. Familiarity with rendering, differentiable rendering, or graphics pipelines, and how they interact with reconstruction systems. Proven ability to work in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and drive projects from concept through deployment. A strong sense of ownership and scientific rigor: you care deeply about correctness, reproducibility, and measurable improvements. Enjoy collaborating with a small, high-caliber team and raising the technical bar through thoughtful design, experimentation, and code quality. 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 $250,000-$350,000 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. 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