PhD Intern, Software Engineer - Graphics (2027)
Figma · San Francisco, CA • New York, NY
About this role
**Figma — PhD Intern, Software Engineer (Graphics) (2027)** Figma is growing a team of passionate creatives and builders on a mission to make design accessible to all. The Rendering & Animation (R&A) team builds the graphics engine that renders the canvas for all Figma applications—making rendering performant, feature-rich, reliable, maintainable, and extendible across products and surfaces. This is a **12 or 16-week internship** starting **May or June 2027**, based in one of our **US hubs: San Francisco or New York**. --- ### What you’ll do at Figma - Learn from industry graphics engineers as an embedded member of the **Rendering & Animation** team - Collaborate with engineers, PMs, designers, and researchers to scope and execute your work - Develop, validate, and document solutions from prototypes to production-ready systems - Drive projects that apply research insights to meaningful product challenges - Contribute to exciting domain areas, such as: - Crafting and optimizing shaders for sophisticated effects - Investigating improvements to anti-aliasing algorithms - Improving media processing capabilities - Animating spline interpolation - And more --- ### We’d love to hear from you if you have - Current enrollment as a **4th or 5th year senior PhD student** pursuing a PhD in **Computer Graphics, Media Processing, or a related field** - Experience working with **OpenGL, WebGL, WebGPU, Vulkan, or Metal** and their shader languages (**GLSL, WGSL**) or other low-level graphics APIs - Proficiency in **C++ or Rust** - A track record of rigorous problem-solving through academic or applied research, with experience thinking holistically about use cases and the low-level technology required --- ### Added plus (not required) - Publications in computer graphics (e.g., SIGGRAPH, Eurographics, High Performance Graphics, NVIDIA GTC, Pacific Graphics) - Proficiency in **WebAssembly**, web graphics, 2D graphics, performance optimization, animation, geometry, or media - Interest in art and design applications - Experience using AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude) to write, debug, and optimize code - Related industry experience via a past internship or full-time role - Strong communication and interpersonal skills, including cross-functional collaboration --- ### Pay & benefits (transparency) - **Hourly base pay:** **$74–$74 USD** - Housing stipend and travel reimbursement (interns) --- ### Equal opportunity & accommodations Figma is an equal opportunity workplace and is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. If you need accommodations, reach out to **accommodations-ext@figma.com**. **Interview note:** Candidates are required to keep cameras on during video interviews, and (if hired) you’ll attend in-person onboarding. --- **Apply** if you’re excited about shaping the future of design and collaboration—even if your experience doesn’t perfectly match every point above.
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