Software Engineer, 3D Rendering

Quick Facts

• Role: Software Engineer, 3D Rendering
• Focus: Founding engineer for photoreal 3D in a Rust-based, cross-platform rendering engine
• Key outcome: Fast interactive preview for editing and physically based final rendering (path-traced or hybrid) with stable, deterministic frame exports

Description

You will define the architecture and build photoreal 3D rendering that matches film-quality footage. The role covers physically based materials, lights, and camera effects, scaling render cost for production scenes, and integrating 3D into a color-managed video/compositing pipeline with export passes. You will also design 3D APIs usable by both human artists and AI agents.

Responsibilities

• Define photoreal 3D architecture, including how ray tracing, rasterization, and denoising divide the work across Metal, Vulkan, Direct3D, and WebGPU
• Build light transport: global illumination, reflections, refraction, soft shadows from area lights, and volumetrics (haze/fog/light shafts)
• Implement physically based models for materials, lights (real-world units), and cameras (exposure, depth of field, motion blur)
• Own image quality: sampling, antialiasing, accumulation, denoising, and firefly suppression to keep frames stable and deterministic for exports
• Scale scenes with acceleration structures, instancing, culling, and memory management for very large scenes
• Integrate 3D into the video, motion graphics, and compositing pipeline, including ACES color management and render passes (depth, normals, motion vectors, light groups)
• Make render cost predictable and rendering robust using profiling and headless batch rendering on local and cloud GPUs
• Design 3D APIs with clear scene representation, actionable validation errors, fast previews, and known render cost before rendering
• Work with engine, product, and AI teams and help hire and grow the 3D rendering team

Requirements

• Deep experience building physically based renderers in production (film/offline renderers, path tracers, or ray-traced/hybrid game engines)
• Strong command of light transport and Monte Carlo rendering fundamentals (rendering equation, integration, importance sampling, material models, denoising)
• Hands-on GPU ray tracing experience with acceleration structures (BVHs) and hardware ray-tracing APIs (Metal ray tracing, Vulkan ray tracing, or DXR)
• Solid understanding of modern rasterization pipelines and hybrid renderers
• Hands-on experience with Metal, Vulkan, Direct3D, or WebGPU, including compute shaders, GPU profiling, and GPU debugging
• Proficiency in Rust or C++ with strong reasoning about memory, concurrency, and performance
• Strong foundations in graphics math (linear algebra, geometry, probability, sampling)
• Strong realism instincts and ability to diagnose and correct artifacts
• Experience owning complex technical projects and making architectural decisions in ambiguous problem spaces
• Ability to work in-person at NYC HQ (Union Square) for most roles

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans
• 401K with employer match
• Commuter benefits
• Catered lunch multiple days per week
• Dinner stipend every night if working late
• Grubhub subscription
• Health & wellness perks including team offsites and monthly team events
• Generous PTO policy