Founding AI/ML Engineer (Remote)

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