Rust Software Engineering Intern (Chip Design Tools) - Fall 2026

Fab2•San Francisco, CA

3d•Onsite

About The Position

The fab2 team is building the next generation of software for silicon chip designers, aiming to create a fast, browser-based, multiplayer platform called Studio. This platform will integrate schematic capture, physical layout, and simulation into a single, end-to-end application, eliminating the need for users to install separate software. The goal is to make chip design as intuitive and powerful as tools like Figma, but for silicon. The team also builds its own fab equipment to close the feedback loop between design and fabrication, accelerating the entire chip development cycle. Interns will work on the application itself, contributing to a Rust-based stack compiled to WebAssembly, with custom rendering using wgpu/WebGPU, and a unified code path for both web and native environments. The role offers direct interaction with chip and process engineers, providing a short feedback loop for the intern's work. The application is complex, akin to Photoshop in its depth, but aims for Figma-like intuitiveness.

Requirements

Strong Rust programming skills, or significant C++/systems experience with a strong curiosity to learn Rust.
Solid systems fundamentals, including memory management, performance optimization, and concurrency.
Experience profiling code and optimizing performance.
A track record of building non-trivial software from scratch, with the ability to explain the end-to-end process.
A portfolio (e.g., GitHub) is required.

Nice To Haves

Experience in game development, engines, or real-time systems (ECS, scene graphs, spatial indexing, physics engines, frame budgets, GUI, low-latency input).
Some background in Electrical Engineering (EE), analog and digital circuits.
Experience with deep, complex software applications (e.g., Blender, Ableton, KiCad, CAD tools, DAWs, game engines).
Experience with distributed or real-time systems (write-ahead logs, event sourcing, replication, CRDTs, OT, websockets).
Experience with data pipelines.
Knowledge of geometry, graph, and routing algorithms; spatial data structures; optimization.
Familiarity with schema evolution and serialization formats (e.g., Protobuf, Flatbuffers, Cap’n Proto).
Experience with graphics and visualization, particularly turning complex datasets into legible and fast on-screen representations.
Experience with custom rendering, shaders, and GPU pipelines (WebGPU, Vulkan, OpenGL).
An interest in version control systems, including their underlying mechanisms.

Responsibilities

Own major features from design through shipping, touching the entire technology stack.
Develop deeply interactive, low-latency editing tools for chip design.
Implement algorithms and computational geometry for features like auto-routing and instant mistake detection.
Build a document model that supports diffing and merging like source code, alongside real-time collaboration.
Develop the sync engine for streaming edits between clients, focusing on eventual consistency, high bandwidth streaming, and correctness.
Create a GPU canvas capable of rendering millions of polygons smoothly, utilizing spatial indexing, culling, and level of detail techniques.
Implement simulation features, including streaming waveforms and interactive analysis.
Contribute to a plugin system using sandboxed WebAssembly components.
Develop a scripting API where scripts are first-class clients.
Build integrations for sending finished designs to the fab.