Phd Intern, Software Engineer - Graphics (2026)

The Rendering & Animation team (R&A) builds the graphics' engine which renders the canvas for all Figma applications. Our mission is to make rendering performant, feature-rich, reliable, maintainable and extendible across all products & surfaces. The team plays a core, bedrock role for the company because it underpins the technology driving the user experience, touching many other teams, and as such is one of the most impactful areas of Figma.

The R&A team is devoted to hiring individuals with graphics expertise. We are interested in a variety of sub-domains, including 2D GPU-driven rendering, computational geometry & vector graphics, animation frameworks, anti-aliasing algorithms, shader effects, and more recently branching into video/image processing. A PhD Intern specializing in any of these areas would be a phenomenal fit for the team with a lot of exciting projects available. The team is geographically distributed around the US (New York, Boston, Alabama, Michigan, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles) with the most in-person collaboration happening in New York.

As an intern on our team, you'll take ownership of a high-impact project at the intersection of your technical strengths and our most pressing graphics, rendering, or media challenges. You'll work closely with your intern manager, team leads, and collaborators across 1-2 partner teams to deliver tangible results within your internship. This is an opportunity to do significant, portfolio-worthy work that directly supplies Figma's visual platform.

This position is eligible for Winter or Summer of 2026 in either San Francisco or New York hub.

What you'll do at Figma:

• Learn from industry graphics engineers
• Collaborate with your intern manager and team members to finalize the project goals and clarify the project requirements, design, architecture and achievements
• Participate as a member of the Rendering & Animation team writing code, tests and documentation, fixing bugs, attending the weekly team meeting and communicating progress updates
• Contribute to exciting domain areas; some examples: crafting and optimizing shaders for sophisticated effects, investigating improvements to anti-aliasing algorithms, evolving physics-based motion frameworks, improving media processing capabilities, animating spline interpolation, and more!

We'd love to hear from you if you have:

• Ph.D in Computer Graphics or Media Processing in their 4-5th year
• Experience working with OpenGL, WebGL, WebGPU, and their respective shader languages (GLSL, WGSL) or other low-level graphics APIs like Vulkan & Metal
• Experience in C++
• Self-motivated initiative to deliver value and think holistically about the use-case as well as the low-level technology

While it's not required, it's an added plus if you also have:

• Experience in WebAssembly and web graphics environments
• Experience in 2D graphics
• Experience in performance optimization
• Experience or curiosity about art & design applications

At Figma, one of our values is Grow as you go. We believe in hiring smart, curious people who are excited to learn and develop their skills. If you're excited about this role but your past experience doesn't align perfectly with the points outlined in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.