Head of Software

About Build AI

Build AI is the data hyperscaler for Physical AI. We're vertically integrated across hardware, manufacturing, logistics, collection, and model training to scale the physical labor dataset orders of magnitude faster than anyone in the world.

Job Summary

We've collected the largest dataset of physical labor in the world. We're scaling from 4M hours today to 1B hours over the next two years, collecting data from 100M+ people worldwide. You'll build and lead the team that writes the software to get us there.

How data collection works

We give wearable cameras to field teams and partners. Each day, they recruit workers, assign devices, pay workers to wear the cameras on the job, collect the devices/SD cards, and upload the footage. At scale, inefficiency, fraud, and human error emerge: devices and SD cards get lost or stolen, devices sit idle, and contributors produce poor-quality data.

What you'll own

• Build the team: hire and lead the Shenzhen software team. You set the hiring bar, the technical direction, and the pace, and you stay hands-on while the team grows.

• Vendor platform: the Android and web app that coordinates our operators, partners, and vendors as they source, onboard, and pay contributors and businesses. That covers device assignment, attendance, collection tracking, payments, and fraud/loss prevention. Like Didi or Uber, but for data collection.

• Partner growth: referral programs that grow the partner network, and models that forecast how much data existing and new partners can collect.

• Data infrastructure: upload, storage, and processing pipelines that run at petabytes per month and grow 10× a year.

• Data QA: orchestrate, train, and fine-tune models for a QA pipeline that catches bad data automatically.

• AI for business owners: an AI efficiency report for factory and business owners. It helps us sign large enterprises and lowers what we pay for collection.

• Recruiting tools: software that speeds up hiring across the company.

• Anything else that is blocking scale.

You'll work directly with the founders and the global ops team, and you'll own outcomes end to end, from setting priorities to shipping and supporting the work.

Culture fit

• You believe your life is wasted if you do not change the world in some non-trivial way.

• You are excited to put everything into the company to do your life's work.

• You love solving hard problems. The harder, the better.

• You thrive with autonomy: spot problems, solve them, own the outcome.

Requirements

• Have built and led an engineering team, including hiring strong engineers yourself.

• Have built and shipped software that real users depend on, and are still hands-on.

• Comfortable across frontend, backend, APIs, and databases.

• Fluent in English and able to be based in Shenzhen full time.

Nice to have

• Android app development.

• Data pipelines, large file uploads, or ML/QA systems.

• Hiring experience in Shenzhen.

• Can start immediately.

Benefits

• Competitive pay

• Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage

• $500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits

• Housing subsidy of $2k per month for those living within walking distance of the office

• Relocation support for those moving to San Francisco (Financial District) or Shenzhen (Nanshan)

• Various wellness benefits covering fitness, mental health, and more

• Daily lunch and dinner in our office

• Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification

• Unlimited Codex and Claude credits

• Travel

How we're different

Build believes in the Bitter Lesson. By taking a general approach of learning from humans, our addressable market is all physical labor.

We are a fully in-person team in San Francisco (Financial District) and Shenzhen (Nanshan), and greatly value engineering skills. We do not have boundaries between engineering and research, and we expect all of our technical staff to contribute to both and work across disciplines as needed.

Build AI is an equal opportunity employer. We review every application. If you do not meet every bullet, still apply. Questions: research@build.ai