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