Senior Project Architect

Overview

Cover designs, engineers, permits, manufactures, and builds custom modern homes in Southern California from our Gardena, Los Angeles factory. Our building system is a small, carefully developed kit of parts that we use to produce fully custom single-family homes and ADUs tailored to each client's site and preferences. Our work sits at the boundary of architecture and technology-forward industrialization.

At its core this is a project architect role: you run the job. You carry each project from signed contract to ready-to-install across a portfolio of 15 to 30 concurrent projects, working with our internal software team to automate and improve the work product as you go.

Your design domain is site integration. Our homes are built from a standardized design system owned by our Architect Lead; the site is different every time, and you own solving it to a high level of technical and design excellence, cost-effectively, knowing where to push back, and feeding what you learn back into the playbook. A meaningful share of our current work is fire rebuilds, so fire-zone requirements and rebuild-lot judgment are core to the job.

You will be one of the few faces of Cover to our clients, guiding them through project decisions and tradeoffs. Timelines, risks, and unknowns are surfaced and communicated early and clearly.

You will run projects directly from day one, and in parallel build the machine that makes the portfolio manageable at growing volume. Over time, as jurisdictions become playbook-stable, the job shifts from processing approvals directly to encoding knowledge into our software platform, and improving on the system, with routine permits handled by the system.

You will report to Greg Nielsen, Head of Product Engineering. Twelve years at Arup as a structural and earthquake engineer on projects including Loma Linda University Medical Center, Apple Park, Allegiant Stadium, and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, followed by five years developing and most recently leading Cover's building system.

The role is fully onsite at our factory and HQ in Gardena. No remote, no hybrid.

Role

Consultant and client coordination. Manage geotech, civil, survey, and other external consultants: scope, procure, schedule, redline, and integrate their work into complete submittal packages. Run the client-side track in parallel with the agency track: decision materials, sign-offs, scope changes, and expectations, so client decisions land alongside agency approvals.

Permit packages and plan check. Own package production and QA across the portfolio, complete for bid and for permit: the same package prices the site work reliably and clears plan check cleanly. Drive our automated set-generation pipeline, fill its gaps, and personally manage submittals, corrections responses, and resubmittals across LADBS and other Southern California jurisdictions. Maintain schedules that connect approval milestones to manufacturing and installation planning.

Site integration. Own the per-project technical design including siting, grading and drainage, retaining and hillside conditions, deck and landscape integrations, and utility routing. Value-engineer the site work with practical, elegant, timeless details that meet client budgets. Build the library of repeating site details so the custom design workload per project falls over time.

Build the approvals machine. Create the tracking, playbooks, and tooling that make the portfolio status and progress legible: where every project is, what it's waiting on, and what unblocks it. Work with our software team to automate more of the pipeline, documenting architectural and regulatory logic clearly enough to be implemented into automation.

On-site construction administration. Periodic site visits to check complex site scopes, retaining walls, planters, hillside conditions, against the drawings, addressing non-conforming conditions. You will own responding to subcontractor RFIs.

Experience

Hard requirements:

• Licensed Architect in California, 7+ years of experience.
• A systematizer by compulsion: a demonstrated history of turning repeated work into templates, standards, and tools. We expect advanced AI tools to be used for leverage throughout your workflow, both in day-to-day execution and in building AI-native workflows.
• Volume. Experience permitting a high volume of projects, with a preference for single family residential.
• Technical. Site design and integration experience: grading, drainage, constrained and hillside lots, and the civil, geotech, and survey coordination, backed by built construction administration experience. Strong detail oriented technical strength, demonstrated experience operating at an excellent technical level autonomously.
• Communication. You proactively manage and front timelines, risks, and unknowns so nobody, client or internal, is surprised. You effectively communicate options and tradeoffs, with cost and schedule impacts to a non-technical audience, including clients.

Beyond those bars, what separates great:

• Organized, and effective at managing project complexity. You can hold a large concurrent portfolio, each project with its own consultants, jurisdiction, client, and schedule, without dropping threads. Volume history is a must.
• You run processes to results. You have personally taken permit sets through plan check and corrections across multiple California jurisdictions, and you drive bureaucratic processes to above average timeline outcomes rather than waiting on them.

Useful but not required:

Design-build delivery, Stormwater / SWPPP / ESCP, MEP coordination, Structural concepts, Scripting or parametric workflows, Modular or offsite construction, Cost estimating, Off-grid experience

Compensation

All our positions offer a compensation package that includes equity and robust benefits.

The base salary for this role is between $130,000 and $150,000 per year.

Our compensation package extends beyond cash salary and encompasses various elements that contribute to a comprehensive rewards system. In addition to a competitive salary, we offer equity through stock options, a discretionary annual bonus, health and fitness reimbursements, high-quality company-subsidized healthcare, a 401(k), and generous paid time off (PTO).

Cover aims to be competitive with its overall compensation packages relative to the market considering the company stage, industry, funding, and location. This market range includes salary, applicable bonuses, and equity, which are each important components of an offer from Cover. More details can be provided during the interview.

Cover's pay ranges are informed and defined through professional-grade salary surveys and compensation data sources. The actual compensation package offered to a successful candidate will additionally be influenced by a variety of factors including the essential functions of the role, experience, credentials and certifications, educational attainment, skill level, and prior accomplishments.

Our mission is to make thoughtfully designed and well-built homes for everyone. We believe that having a diverse and inclusive workplace brings a range of unique perspectives to the table and helps us better accomplish this mission. We are an equal opportunity employer to all, regardless of age, ancestry, color, disability (mental and physical), exercising the right to family care and medical leave, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, political affiliation, race, religious creed, sex (includes pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and related medical conditions), and sexual orientation. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without discrimination.