Software Engineer, Graphics & Media

Mirage is a leading AI short-form video company building full-stack foundation models and products for video creation, production, and editing. Over 20 million creators use their products. They are seeking an experienced software engineer to design and build their next-generation, cross-platform rendering engine for video and graphics. This foundational role involves working on core systems for media rendering, transformation, and composition, defining architecture, and making fundamental technical decisions to support sophisticated creative workflows.

Must Have

• Design and build a high-performance, cross-platform rendering engine for video and graphics
• Own core media and rendering systems, including composition, transforms, effects, and execution pipelines
• Make foundational architectural decisions around engine structure, language choice, performance tradeoffs, and long-term maintainability
• Optimize for performance, correctness, and scalability, balancing throughput, latency, and resource efficiency in production environments
• Collaborate with product, AI, and client teams to ensure the engine supports evolving creative and product requirements
• Build abstractions and APIs that enable other teams to build on top of the engine safely and efficiently
• Strong experience building performance-critical systems in production
• Deep understanding of graphics, media, or rendering pipelines, such as video processing, real-time or offline rendering, or GPU-accelerated systems
• Proficiency in one or more systems programming languages (e.g., C++, Rust, or similar)
• Strong computer science fundamentals, especially in algorithms, data structures, and systems design
• Experience owning large, complex projects over long time horizons
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous problem spaces and making high-leverage technical decisions

Good to Have

• Worked on rendering engines, media pipelines, or graphics infrastructure used at scale
• Experience with video codecs, media formats, or GPU compute
• Built or maintained cross-platform engines or shared core systems
• Enjoys close collaboration and working on deep technical problems

Perks & Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans
• 401K with employer match
• Commuter Benefits
• Catered lunch multiple days per week
• Dinner stipend every night if you're working late and want a bite!
• Grubhub subscription
• Health & Wellness Perks (Talkspace, Kindbody, One Medical subscription, HealthAdvocate, Teladoc)
• Multiple team offsites per year with team events every month
• Generous PTO policy

Mirage is the leading AI short-form video company. We’re building full-stack foundation models and products that redefine video creation, production and editing. Over 20 million creators and businesses use Mirage’s products to reach their full creative and commercial potential.

We are a rapidly growing team of ambitious, experienced, and devoted engineers, researchers, designers, marketers, and operators based in NYC. As an early member of our team, you’ll have an opportunity to have an outsized impact on our products and our company's culture.

Our Products

• Captions
• Mirage Studio

Our Technology

• AI Research @ Mirage
• Mirage Model Announcement
• Seeing Voices (white-paper)

Press Coverage

• TechCrunch
• Lenny’s Podcast
• Forbes AI 50
• Fast Company

Our Investors

We’re very fortunate to have some the best investors and entrepreneurs backing us, including Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Uncommon Projects, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, Lenny Rachitsky, Antoine Martin, Julie Zhuo, Ben Rubin, Jaren Glover, SVAngel, 20VC, Ludlow Ventures, Chapter One, and more.

\*\* Please note that all of our roles will require you to be in-person at our NYC HQ (located in Union Square)

We do not work with third-party recruiting agencies, please do not contact us\*\*\*\*

About the Role

We’re looking for an experienced software engineer to help design and build our next-generation, cross-platform rendering engine for video and graphics. This is a foundational, long-term effort: you’ll work on core systems that power how media is rendered, transformed, and composed across platforms. The work spans low-level rendering, media processing, and systems design. You’ll help define the architecture, make fundamental technical decisions, and build infrastructure that will support increasingly sophisticated creative workflows.

We don’t use hierarchical titles or levels internally, but are currently hiring engineers who have operated at senior or staff+ scope.

Responsibilities

• Design and build a high-performance, cross-platform rendering engine for video and graphics, capable of powering complex creative workflows
• Own core media and rendering systems, including composition, transforms, effects, and execution pipelines
• Make foundational architectural decisions around engine structure, language choice, performance tradeoffs, and long-term maintainability
• Optimize for performance, correctness, and scalability, balancing throughput, latency, and resource efficiency in production environments
• Collaborate with product, AI, and client teams to ensure the engine supports evolving creative and product requirements
• Build abstractions and APIs that enable other teams to build on top of the engine safely and efficiently

What makes you a great fit

• Strong experience building performance-critical systems in production
• Deep understanding of graphics, media, or rendering pipelines, such as video processing, real-time or offline rendering, or GPU-accelerated systems
• Proficiency in one or more systems programming languages (e.g., C++, Rust, or similar), with the ability to reason about memory, concurrency, and performance
• Strong computer science fundamentals, especially in algorithms, data structures, and systems design
• Experience owning large, complex projects over long time horizons
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous problem spaces and making high-leverage technical decisions

Even better if…

• You’ve worked on rendering engines, media pipelines, or graphics infrastructure used at scale
• You have experience with video codecs, media formats, or GPU compute
• You’ve built or maintained cross-platform engines or shared core systems
• You enjoy close collaboration and working on deep technical problems

Benefits:

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans
• 401K with employer match
• Commuter Benefits
• Catered lunch multiple days per week
• Dinner stipend every night if you're working late and want a bite!
• Grubhub subscription
• Health & Wellness Perks (Talkspace, Kindbody, One Medical subscription, HealthAdvocate, Teladoc)
• Multiple team offsites per year with team events every month
• Generous PTO policy

Captions provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Please note benefits apply to full time employees only.