PhD Intern, Software Engineer - Graphics (2027)

Public source summary from intern-list.com / Jobright.

Figma is hiring a PhD Intern to contribute to its Rendering & Animation team, which builds the graphics engine for Figma’s applications. The intern will own a high-impact project addressing graphics, rendering, or media challenges and collaborate with partner teams to deliver results.

Responsibilities

Learn from industry graphics engineers and participate as an embedded team 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; some examples: crafting and optimizing shaders for sophisticated effects, investigating improvements to anti-aliasing algorithms, improving media processing capabilities, animating spline interpolation, and more!

Qualifications

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 respective shader languages (GLSL, WGSL) or other low-level graphics APIs Proficiency in either 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 Demonstrated expertise in computer graphics, supported by publications at conferences such as SIGGRAPH, Eurographics, High Performance Graphics, NVIDIA GTC, or 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, with demonstrated experience collaborating across functions

Benefits: Figma also offers interns a housing stipend Figma also offers interns travel reimbursement