Dear applicants, please note that applications without salary expectations and an active LinkedIn profile will not be considered.
We are hiring a Founding AI/ML Engineer to architect and ship production-grade AI systems transforming one of the world’s largest and least automated industries — construction. This is a product-first AI engineering role focused on multimodal intelligence, document understanding, and agentic workflow automation. You will work directly with the Chief AI Officer and founders to move from low-automation to high-automation mode, where AI agents perform core operational work with light human oversight.
Details
Location: Philadelphia, PA · New York City, NY · Washington, D.C.
Work Model: Hybrid / Remote-first with optional Philly hub
Employment Type: Full-Time
Experience Level: 6+ years
Equity: Competitive early-employee equity
Visa Sponsorship: H-1B available
Key Responsibilities
Build and ship production-grade AI systems used daily by real customers
Design multimodal pipelines for drawings, specs, and construction documents
Build agentic workflows automating preconstruction tasks:
- Document intake
- Extraction
- Takeoff support
- Bid preparation
- QA workflows
Build and improve:
- Retrieval systems (embeddings, reranking, chunking)
- Evaluation systems
- Orchestration layers
Optimize model quality, latency, reliability, and cost efficiency
Prototype and iterate quickly on customer-facing AI features
Own systems end-to-end (experiment deploy monitor improve)
Help shape engineering culture and long-term technical direction
Requirements
6+ years of engineering experience
Experience at an early-stage, high-growth startup
Shipped production-grade AI systems to real customers
Hands-on LLM and/or computer vision experience
Retrieval systems experience (embeddings, chunking, grounding)
Agentic workflow experience (tools, APIs, state management, retries, guardrails)
Strong backend fundamentals:
- APIs
- Async jobs / queues
- Databases
- Cloud deployment
- Monitoring
- Full end-to-end ownership mindset
Nice to Have
Construction / AEC exposure
Multimodal AI or document intelligence background
OCR / segmentation / computer vision experience
Experience converting human-operated workflows into AI product systems
Inference optimization or evaluation system expertise
Benefits
Meaningful early-employee ESOP grant
Employer-funded health insurance (Patch model)
Team / meal stipend
Growth path to technical leadership (optional management track)
Interview Process
Initial Screen (30 min)
Culture & Team Round
~2-hour Technical / Architecture Deep Dive
Optional On-Site (Philadelphia)
Offer