Prototyping Engineer - Model Maker

About the role

As a Prototyping Engineer within the multidisciplinary Proto Make Team, you will employ your expertise in problem solving and model making to accelerate product development across Meta's hardware organization. You will collaborate with teams within Hardware Engineering, Research and Development, and Industrial Design. These projects cover a wide variety of technical challenges unique to Meta's hardware portfolio, including Meta Quest, Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, AI wearables, robotics, and beyond. As the next stage of consumer hardware moves closer to the body, rapid soft element exploration has become exponentially more vital in creating human first technologies. This role requires expertise in molding and casting for use in prototype hardware informing early design decisions. Knowledge of silicone, polyurethanes, additive manufacturing and novel fabrication processes will be crucial in creating fast prototypes in all shapes and sizes. You will work throughout the hardware lifecycle with a particular focus on prototype ideation and early-to-mid stage development. This is a casting and molding specialist role. Your primary craft is mold design and construction and the casting of silicones, urethanes, and foams — you will independently own the most demanding casting and molding work in the lab, adding genuine specialist capacity and redundancy rather than task-level coverage. As is typical of any model making role here, that work is delivered inside complete Industrial Design models, so you will routinely incorporate components from CNC machining, 3D printing, and 2D cutting to carry a build end-to-end. You will also partner with the Casting & Molding leads to raise the maturity of how the function runs — tooling, SOPs, and workflow that scale beyond a handful of individuals. Our team is constantly growing and you will be relied upon to help define team direction and be motivated to improve the effectiveness of our tools and processes from each project to the next.

Responsibilities

• Complex casting & molding: Independently run the lab's most demanding casting and molding projects in silicones, urethanes, resins and foams, mixed, degassed, cast and cured to spec. Finish cast prototypes to rigorous cosmetic standards. Partner with the Casting and Molding leads on the hardest new problems, adding specialist capacity and redundancy to a critical function
• Mold design & construction: Design and build 3D printed and traditional molds, including multi-part and complex geometries. Design and adapt molds, fixtures and model components in Autodesk Fusion instead of only building to spec
• Complete models: Take designs from concept to finished physical model, pulling in CNC, 3D printed and 2D cut parts and using both internal and external manufacturing. Bring core model making skills: high-quality finishing, part prep, scratch building, color mixing and strong material knowledge
• Soft goods prototyping: Quickly explore cast soft components for products worn on the body. Work with Industrial Design, Engineering and Research to solve complex design and UX