Design Engineer Intern

Team Description:

The BCI Applications Team is responsible for building Telepathy.app—software which enables people with paralysis to use computing devices with precision and ease, via thought alone. Our team spans a wide range of disciplines, from neuroscience and machine learning to software engineering and interface design.

Job Description:

We’re looking for a design engineering intern to conceptualize, prototype, and ship novel computing interfaces tailored for BCI. Our ideal candidate will possess the following qualities:

• Passion to explore an open-ended, multi-disciplinary, constrained space where design choices are informed by neural structure, model architecture, radio bandwidth, and more. For instance, a slight difference in an animated spring coefficient can change perceptual response time, shifting the alignment of labels and the performance of our decoders. You will actively collaborate with domain experts within and outside the team to understand these constraints and design your way around them
• An intuitive sense for what level of fidelity to reach for when navigating this space, be it a conversation, a rough sketch, or a testable prototype
• Excitement to work within and push the boundaries of an entirely new medium of interaction without the traditional sensory feedback of existing physical input devices (e.g., the kinetic friction of glass along the surface of a trackpad, or the resistive pressure of a spring during a keypress)
• The ability to empathize with and design for people with a sensory experience that differs from your own, and ambition to build something that feels magical, beyond the local minima of that which “works.” You’ll do whatever it might take to deliver that experience, be it a highly optimized vertex shader or a custom property animator, while maintaining an extremely high bar for fluidity and detail throughout
• A strong point-of-view, without ego—you may occasionally pursue a hunch that not everyone on the team agrees with, but are relentless about testing, deleting, and learning from ideas that don’t work

Job Responsibilities:

• Design, prototype, build, and ship novel computing interfaces for BCI
• Work with study participants to iterate on and further refine these interfaces
• Collaborate with domain experts in neuroscience, machine learning, and implant engineering to maximize the precision and fluidity of these interfaces within our constraint-space

Required Qualifications:

• Pursuing a degree in Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, or related field; or equivalent experience
• A portfolio of demonstrated experience designing and shipping features end-to-end (i.e., initial conceptualization → nth prototype → initial release → nth iteration)
• Proficiency in Apple frameworks (i.e., SwiftUI, UIKit/AppKit, and/or Metal) or an equivalent and transferable stack (i.e., React, Three.js, WebGPU)
• Familiarity with Objective-C, C, and/or C++

Expected Compensation:

The anticipated hourly rate for this position is listed below.

California Hourly Flat Rate:
$35/Hr USD