Software Engineer - Creation Engine

Figma is growing our team of passionate people on a mission to make design accessible to all. Born on the Web, Figma helps entire product teams brainstorm, create, test, and ship better designs, together. From great products to long-lasting companies, we believe that nothing great is made alone—come make with us!

Our Creation Engine teams work on some of the core technologies that power our real time, browser-based Figma Design and FigJam products. These teams work mostly (but not exclusively) on client-side code that runs in the browser. Under the hood, Figma shares a lot of similarities to a game engine. We develop this C++/WebAssembly engine to ensure internal and external developers can rapidly build new products and features that are fast and reliable by default. We're always looking for ways to make our platform more extensible, more performant, less resource intensive, and more reliable. We own areas such as our in-memory data model (SceneGraph), renderer, multiplayer client/server protocols, and plugins and REST API. Figma is a highly collaborative organization and most projects are owned by small teams of 2-3 people. You’ll form strong relationships with product managers and designers, and can expect to partner regularly with engineers and leaders beyond your immediate team. We strive to foster an inclusive culture that promotes equity and belonging, and use the following values to guide how we work together: communicate early and often, lift your team, focus on craftsmanship, and prioritize impact. You can learn more about our engineering values and how we developed them here. This is a full-time role that can be held from one of our US hubs or remotely in the United States.

What you’ll do at Figma:

In 30 days, you will...

• Be paired with an onboarding buddy on your team who will help you ramp in our codebase and get to know Figma. You’ll move from starter tasks meant to familiarize you with our workflows to joining your teammates on larger projects.
• Get to know your Figmates across the company via team building activities, participating in our Give a Fig philanthropy efforts, joining one of our Employee Resource Groups, creating something amazing during Maker Week, or having hangs over Zoom (or in person once we’re back in one of our San Francisco or New York hubs).

In 60 days, you will...

• Work closely with teammates and partners in Engineering, Product, Design, Marketing, User Research, and Data Science to build new features and achieve roadmap goals. We prioritize collaboration and cross-functional partnerships, so you won’t operate in silos.
• Craft performance objectives with your manager that align to company priorities and career development opportunities.
• Help grow Figma by interviewing candidates for teams across the Engineering organization.

In 90 days(and beyond), you will...

• Be a mentor and provide thoughtful feedback to your peers, and benefit from strong personal and professional mentorship opportunity yourself.
• Contribute to org-wide initiatives like new hire onboarding, developing interview processes, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts.
• Continue ramping and learning. The technical challenges you'll tackle on a Creation Engine team are unique, fun, ambitious, and ever-evolving.

Some projects you could work on:

• Modularizing our C++/Wasm engine to support new features in Figma Design and FigJam, as well as unlocking the development of future products
• Extending our multiplayer protocol to enable more advanced editing and collaboration modes across files
• Creating frameworks to maintain performance and memory standards across our products —we want to keep pushing the limits of what it's possible to create in a browser while maintaining a highly performant UX
• Improving our file load times by dynamically loading needed content, optimizing our client-server protocols, and exploring ways to allow users to interact with files earlier
• Optimizing our renderer in order to increase frame rate during periods of heavy interaction with FigJam
• Providing rich abstractions and APIs between our React/Typescript and C++/Wasm engine.
• Expanding the way our users can extend the functionality of our products through plugins and widgets, our REST API, as well through new ML-powered extensibility features

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

• At least 8+ years of professional experience shipping features or products with specialization in web frontend frameworks and C++/Wasm, and operating in a tech lead capacity
• Experience working on game engines, client side technologies and platforms, API products, or developer tools
• Demonstrated fluency with one or more programming languages, including but not limited to: TypeScript/Javascript, C++, Python, Java, Objective-C, Go, or Rust
• Proactive communication skills and a desire to work in a collaborative environment
• An interest in mentorship, learning from others, and digging into new challenges
• An inclusive approach towards building features, solving problems, investing in culture, and growing teams

Our end to end process will cover, at a high level:

• An initial non-technical call with a recruiter.
• A live practical technical screen with an engineer using the programming language of your choice.
• A video-based conversation with the manager of your potential team.
• A fully virtual “onsite” interview with both technical/coding and non-technical/discussion-based areas of focus.

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.

Read more about our team:

• How to build a plugin system on the web and also sleep well at night
• How Figma’s multiplayer technology works
• Investing in Figma: The Decade of Design
• How work is changing at Figma

Pay Transparency Disclosure

If based in Figma’s San Francisco or New York hub offices, this role has the annual base salary range stated below.

Job level and actual compensation will be decided based on factors including, but not limited to, individual qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process (including skills and prior relevant experience, potential impact, and scope of role), market demands, and specific work location. The listed range is a guideline, and the range for this role may be modified. For roles that are available to be filled remotely, the pay range is localized according to employee work location by a factor of between 80% and 100% of range. Please discuss your specific work location with your recruiter for more information.

Figma offers equity to employees, as well a competitive package of additional benefits, including health, dental & vision, retirement with company contribution, parental leave & reproductive or family planning support, mental health & wellness benefits, generous PTO, company recharge days, a learning & development stipend, a work from home stipend, and cell phone reimbursement. Figma also offers sales incentive pay for most sales roles. Figma’s compensation and benefits are subject to change and may be modified in the future.

Annual Base Salary Range (SF/NY Hub): $212,000—$350,000 USD

We will work to ensure individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please let your recruiter know if you require accommodation.

About Figma

Dylan Field and Evan Wallace co-founded Figma in 2012 with the vision of building tools for designers in the browser. Their goal was to create the first design tool that combined the accessibility of the Web with the functionality of a native app. Today Figma is a platform with tools and spaces to support the entire product development process—idea to design to build—and has simplified collaboration for companies like Microsoft, Uber, and The New York Times to name a few.

At Figma, we celebrate and support our differences. We know employing a team rich in diverse backgrounds, experiences, and opinions allows our employees, products, and community to flourish. Figma is an equal opportunity workplace—we are dedicated to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national orientation, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.

By applying for this job, the candidate acknowledges and agrees that any personal data contained in their application or supporting materials will be processed in accordance with the applicable candidate section of Figma's Privacy Policy.