Research Scientist Intern, Audio User Experience

About the Role

The Meta Reality Labs Research Audio team is focused on creating virtual sounds perceptually indistinguishable from reality and redefining human hearing. This role seeks interns to understand how future users make sense of and live with these audio technologies.

Key Responsibilities

• Exploratory and generative qualitative research on how people emotionally experience audio in augmented and virtual reality, including what feels present, moving, intimate, effortful, or disorienting, and how those feelings shape technology adoption or abandonment.
• Design and execution of qualitative studies, interview protocols, diary studies, contextual and field research, and participatory sessions to understand how people experience new audio technologies.
• Analysis of qualitative data (transcripts, observational notes, audio/video, open-ended responses) using thematic, grounded-theory, or discourse-analytic approaches, and synthesis into frameworks, journeys, and experiential models.
• Collaboration with and support of researchers, engineers, and designers across disciplines, including partnering with quantitative colleagues to triangulate findings.
• Clear and compelling communication of research framing, progress, and interpretation, including narrative, verbatim, and visual storytelling that moves product and research decisions.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Currently have, or are in the process of obtaining, a PhD in psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, sociology, communication, human-computer interaction, human factors, or a similar field.
• 2+ years of experience conducting qualitative or mixed methods human subjects research, preferably with a focus in or adjacent to emotional, sensory, or immersive experience.
• 2+ years of experience designing qualitative protocols and conducting interpretive analysis at the doctoral level, including hands-on experience with qualitative analysis tools or practices such as Dovetail, NVivo, ATLAS.ti, Dedoose, or systematic coding in spreadsheets.
• Expertise in one or more of the below research areas:
• Emotion and affective experience
• Presence and immersion
• Autobiographical or episodic memory and how experiences are recalled and recounted
• Attention and distraction
• Interpersonal connection and social closeness
• Sensory and listening experience
• Must obtain work authorization in the country of employment at the time of hire, and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience studying how people experience sound, listening, or music, including research on listening effort, soundscapes, or audio-mediated communication.
• Familiarity with AR/VR technologies and/or hearables and wearable audio technologies.
• Experience with longitudinal, diary, in-home, or in-the-wild research, including recruiting and building rapport with participants from varied backgrounds.
• Experience eliciting hard-to-articulate experience, for example emotional reactions, bodily or sensory responses, or recollected moments, using methods such as think-aloud, elicitation interviews, photo or audio diaries, or participatory sessions.
• Proven track record of achieving significant results as demonstrated by grants, fellowships, patents, as well as first-authored publications at leading venues such as: ACM CHI, CSCW, Frontiers in Virtual Reality, or similar.
• Experience working and communicating cross functionally in a team environment, and translating qualitative insight for engineering and quantitative audiences.
• Intent to return to a degree program after the completion of the internship/co-op.