This week, a curious hire opportunity appeared over at Samsung, just in time for its concurrent augmented reality/mixed reality headset push. Specifically, the role is filling an XR Director gap at Samsung Research America as part of the division’s MPS (Mobile Platform Services), SRA, and Immersive Experiences (IMEX) Team.
The LinkedIn job XR Director listing notes how the role will help to lead Samsung’s framework, runtime, and SDK for augmented, virtual, and mixed reality technologies in an effort to develop next-generation head-mounted displays and “intelligent glasses.”
Moreover, the listing highlights how the XR Director will help shape Samsung’s work towards creating “commercial and next-gen technologies that impact Samsung’s vision for the next few years.”
The role obviously does not reveal leaks of Moohan information that XR audiences do not already know. However, one interesting point is the potential of Samsung creating an Avatar system – perhaps similar to Vision Pro Personas or Meta Horizon avatars – as the listing expresses the need for the XR Director hire to have “experience with Avatar solutions, with tracking of head, hands, eyes, and facial expressions.”
The XR Director will most likely help in developing the upcoming Moohan headset, as the forward-momentum drive for Samsung’s forthcoming headset is in motion. Over the past two months, a trove of information flooded XR headlines this month, cementing an upcoming race between competitors like Meta, Apple, and others – a sentiment only shared by the job listing with Samsung asking for an XR Director with experience in competitive XR devices such as “Quest, Vision Pro, Pico, Vive, HoloLens, and Magic Leap.”
The Wearables Sharktank
The XR device marketplace is becoming an undeniable shark tank. Last year, OpenAI even boosted its smart glasses hiring across the board in a distinctively competitive fashion, with Caitlin Kalinowski Meta’s Former Head of AR Glasses Hardware—including the development of Orion—shifting gears, leaving Zuckerberg’s company to become a member of OpenAI’s technical staff, which covers work on robots and consumer hardware. Moreover, OpenAI hired ex-Apple iPhone leader Jony Ive in 2022 to design an emerging hardware product that boosts the firm’s AI platform.
Apple also lost a key figure from its Vision Pro development team. Dan Riccio, the former Chief of Hardware Engineering, retired last year after playing a significant role in the development and eventual release of the Apple Vision Pro—this marked Apple’s entrance into the XR market earlier last year. The device launched with considerable hype; however, its high price and slow adoption raised questions about its long-term viability-more recent CES 2025 NVIDIA announcements kept its productivity promise alive.
Given Riccio’s departure, Apple was well-prepared to transition oversight of the Vision Pro development to new leaders, including Mike Rockwell who collaborated with Riccio on the Vision Pro, elevating the device further.
