Founding AI Engineer

Clera

$120K — $180K *
Real Estate & Construction
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Hands-on experience with computer vision and multimodal AI on unstructured data
  • Experience launching AI systems into production or contributing to new product development
  • Ability to quickly iterate on prototypes based on user feedback
  • Willingness to engage in pragmatic engineering tasks
  • Strong communication skills with an emphasis on collaboration
  • Genuine desire to enhance affordability in housing and infrastructure
  • Experience building or shipping user-facing products
  • US work authorization is required; open to new graduates with relevant experience

Responsibilities

  • Apply advanced AI techniques to construction documents
  • Rapidly prototype and iterate models based on feedback
  • Build and deploy reliable AI systems on diverse inputs
  • Own end-to-end development of the intelligence layer
  • Collaborate with product teams to identify impactful solutions
  • Perform practical engineering tasks including data labeling and ETL
  • Communicate progress and decisions transparently across the team

Benefits

  • Equity participation in an early-stage startup
  • Opportunity to work on impactful housing and infrastructure projects
  • Potential for professional growth in a dynamic environment
  • Collaborative and innovative team culture
  • Hands-on involvement in shaping the company’s direction and technology
Full Job Description
About the Role

This is a founding engineering role at an early-stage construction technology startup building an AI intelligence layer that transforms messy blueprints, permits, and construction documents into actionable insights. You will own the modeling, data pipelines, and inference systems that power automated material takeoffs and cost estimation, directly accelerating the development of housing, hospitals, and schools.
What You'll Do
  • Apply state-of-the-art computer vision, LLM, and multimodal AI techniques to real-world construction documents.
  • Rapidly prototype models and iterate based on user feedback and production data.
  • Build and deploy AI systems that operate reliably on noisy, heterogeneous inputs.
  • Own the intelligence layer end-to-end, including modeling, data pipelines, and inference.
  • Collaborate closely with product and users to identify and solve high-impact problems.
  • Handle practical engineering work including data labeling, ETL, and deployment tasks as part of a small team.
  • Communicate progress and tradeoffs clearly and empathetically across the team.
What We're Looking For
  • Hands-on experience applying computer vision, multimodal AI, and LLM techniques in production, including on messy real-world documents or similar unstructured data.
  • A 0-to-1 builder mindset: experience launching AI systems into production or building core parts of a new product.
  • Comfort iterating quickly on prototypes driven by real user feedback.
  • Willingness to take on pragmatic engineering work (data labeling, ETL, deployment) as a founding team member.
  • Strong communication skills, a growth mindset, and an honest, empathetic approach to collaboration.
  • Genuine motivation to make housing and infrastructure more affordable, not just to maximize compensation.
  • Experience building or shipping something that real users or customers used.
  • US work authorization required; any experience level welcome, including new graduates with relevant production experience.
  • Construction domain knowledge is a plus.
Compensation & Benefits

Base salary: $120,000 to $180,000 USD annually, plus equity. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location

On-site in San Francisco, CA. Candidates must be based in San Francisco or willing to relocate; this is a full-time, in-office role.

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