Founding AI Engineer

About the Role

This is a founding engineering role at a seed-stage AI startup building the intelligence layer for the construction industry. The company uses cutting-edge computer vision and multimodal AI to transform messy blueprints, permits, and construction documents into actionable insights — reducing friction in cost estimation and permit workflows to make building faster, cheaper, and more equitable.

You'll be one of the earliest engineers on the team, with direct ownership over AI systems that have real-world impact on housing, hospitals, and schools. This is a high-autonomy, high-impact role for someone who thrives in a 0-to-1 environment and wants to ship AI that people actually use.

What You'll Do

• Apply state-of-the-art computer vision, LLM, and multimodal AI techniques to real-world construction documents.

• Own the intelligence layer — modeling, data pipelines, and inference — rather than the application UI.

• Rapidly prototype models and iterate based on user feedback and real production data.

• Build and deploy production AI systems that operate on noisy, heterogeneous inputs (images, text, PDFs, blueprints).

• Collaborate closely with product and end users to surface and solve high-impact problems.

• Embrace pragmatic full-stack AI engineering, including data labeling, ETL, and deployment tasks as part of a small team.

• Communicate progress and tradeoffs with empathy and transparency across the team.

What We're Looking For

Required:

• Hands-on applied computer vision and machine learning experience, including training and deploying models in production.

• Experience building end-to-end AI systems with a focus on the intelligence layer (not the application layer) in a production environment.

• Demonstrated 0-to-1 builder mindset: launching AI systems or building core parts of a new product at a startup or in an early-stage environment.

• Familiarity with state-of-the-art CV, LLM, and multimodal model approaches and tooling.

• Experience working with multimodal data — images, text, documents — in production.

• Ability to iterate quickly on prototypes based on real user feedback.

• Strong communication skills, growth mindset, and an honest, empathetic approach to collaboration.

• Willingness to handle practical, unglamorous engineering work as part of a small, scrappy team.

• US work authorization required (no visa sponsorship available).

Nice to Have:

• Construction domain knowledge or background.

• Experience shipping a product to real users or paying customers.

Experience Level: Open to all levels, including new graduates, provided you have relevant applied AI/CV experience.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: $120,000 – $180,000 USD annually, depending on experience.

• Early-stage equity as a founding team member.

Location

• San Francisco, CA, USA — full-time, in-office.

• Candidates must be based in San Francisco or willing to relocate.

• This is not a remote role.

• US work authorization required; visa sponsorship is not available.