Gym Class Seeks Founding Design Engineer for VR Expansion

VR social platform Gym Class (by IRL Studios) has opened a founding design engineer role to accelerate development of its mobile web application and in-VR web interfaces. The position targets senior to principal-level candidates with hybrid design/engineering skills, offering $170K-$240K salary plus equity for work on platforms extending beyond the company's core Meta Quest basketball game.

The role requires owning end-to-end feature development—from Figma prototyping to React/Node.js implementation—for web surfaces embedded in both mobile and VR environments. Responsibilities include establishing a unified design system, optimizing for 60fps performance in resource-constrained VR hardware, and implementing analytics-driven iteration cycles. The position emphasizes measurable outcomes like bundle size reduction and load time optimization rather than abstract design goals.

Candidates need 3-6+ years of consumer product experience with demonstrated expertise in React, TypeScript, CSS animations, and responsive layout systems. The job description specifically prioritizes engineers who can "turn rough ideas into polished flows" and maintain production-grade quality while moving quickly—a requirement reflecting the startup's 20-person team size and ambitious roadmap.

Gym Class's hiring push follows its $8M funding round from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, and the National Basketball Association. The company currently boasts 79,000+ reviews and a 4.9-star rating on Meta Quest, with recent licensing deals involving both the NBA and MLB. This design engineering role appears strategically positioned to support Gym Class's expansion into non-basketball social experiences, as hinted by mentions of "spectating" and "discovery" features in the job description.

Notable challenges for the position include:

1. Cross-platform constraints: Maintaining visual consistency between mobile browsers and VR renderers with divergent performance characteristics
2. Interaction design complexity: Creating intuitive interfaces for VR environments where traditional UX patterns often fail
3. Scalability: Building reusable components before established design patterns fully emerge

The role's hybrid design-engineering focus remains uncommon outside major tech firms, reflecting Gym Class's bet that integrated prototyping-to-production workflows provide competitive advantage. However, the requirement to simultaneously optimize for mobile and VR performance may prove technically demanding given current WebXR limitations.

Company details: Gym Class | Meta Quest Store Listing | NBA Partnership Announcement