Optical Engineering Intern

About the Role

Join Reality Labs and help define the next generation of Wearables and Mixed Reality experiences. Our team is pioneering advanced optical systems that seamlessly merge physical and digital worlds through cutting-edge wearable technology.

As an Optical Engineering Intern on the Camera & Depth Sensors team, you will work alongside the optical engineers who design and productize the camera lenses, depth optics, cover windows, and light pipes at the heart of Meta's AR, VR, and AI Glasses products. You will own a focused technical project with a real deliverable on our roadmap — building optical models, quantifying design trade-offs, correlating simulation against measurement, and presenting your findings to the engineers who will carry the work forward. This is an opportunity to see how optical engineering decisions translate into shipping consumer hardware, at a scale and pace that is difficult to experience anywhere else.

This is a 12-week internship.

Key Responsibilities

• Own a focused optical engineering project from problem definition through modeling, analysis, validation, and final presentation, with guidance from your intern manager and a technical mentor.
• Build and run optical models and simulations (sequential and non-sequential) to evaluate how optical components (camera lenses, cover windows, depth optics, and light pipes) affect system-level performance.
• Analyze optical performance metrics such as MTF, stray light, distortion, surface form and scatter, and quantify design trade-offs against engineering requirements.
• Develop analysis scripts and tooling in Python or MATLAB to automate simulation workflows, post-process large datasets, and make results reproducible for the broader team.
• Support lab characterization of optical components, including measurement setup, data collection, and correlation of measured results against simulation predictions.
• Document assumptions, methods, and results clearly, and present findings to optical, camera, and cross-functional engineering partners.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Coursework or project experience in geometrical and physical optics, imaging, or radiometry.
• Experience with at least one optical design or analysis tool (e.g., Zemax, CODE V, LightTools, FRED, or comparable).
• Programming and data analysis experience in Python or MATLAB.

Preferred Qualifications

• Coursework or research in imaging systems, illumination design, stray light analysis, or computational imaging.
• Hands-on optical lab experience with instrumentation such as spectrometers, interferometers, scatterometers, lab microscopes, or MTF test benches.
• Familiarity with optical performance metrics and measurement techniques (MTF, BSDF, surface form and roughness, distortion, transmitted wavefront error).
• Exposure to non-sequential or stray light simulation, tolerance analysis, or Monte Carlo yield analysis.
• Familiarity with optical materials, thin-film coatings, or injection-molded and formed optical components.
• Interest in applying machine learning or automation to optical design, simulation, or data analysis workflows.
• Experience communicating technical results clearly to a multidisciplinary audience.

About Meta

Meta builds technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world. Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology. People who choose to build their careers by building with us at Meta help shape a future that will take us beyond what digital connection makes possible today—beyond the constraints of screens, the limits of distance, and even the rules of physics.