AI Lead / Founding AI Engineer – Buildors (PlanEstimate Initiative)
Company
Buildors is building the Everything Construction App—a vertically integrated platform covering estimating, project management, procurement, CRM, scheduling, and financial controls for contractors. AI is not a feature at Buildors; it is the backbone.
Your first mission will be PlanEstimate, our AI-powered estimating engine. From there, you will architect and deploy AI across every major Buildors module.
About PlanEstimate (Your First Assignment)
PlanEstimate converts PDF construction blueprints into CSI-coded, line-item cost estimates covering labor, materials, quantities, units, and markup. No CAD. No manual takeoffs. PDFs only.
Construction estimating today is slow, error-prone, and a major cause of cost overruns and delays. PlanEstimate replaces manual blueprint reading with an AI pipeline combining OCR, computer vision, and structured cost mapping, producing editable, industry-standard estimates in minutes instead of days.
PlanEstimate is live as a concept and prototype. You will turn it into a production-grade AI system and then replicate the AI framework across Buildors.
Role Overview
We are hiring a Founding AI Engineer / Head of AI (initially contract, path to full-time, equity, or co-founder).
You will:
Own AI strategy across Buildors end-to-end
Lead development of PlanEstimate as the first flagship AI product
Design reusable AI infrastructure for estimating, scheduling, procurement, compliance, and forecasting
This is a hands-on builder role, not research-only. You will write production code, ship features, and define architecture.
Core Responsibilities
1. PlanEstimate – AI Blueprint-to-Estimate Engine
Build the full pipeline to ingest PDF construction drawings
Implement OCR for notes, dimensions, legends, and callouts
Implement object/symbol detection for architectural, electrical, plumbing, and equipment symbols
Map detected elements to CSI MasterFormat cost codes
Generate structured estimates: quantities, units, labor, materials, markup
Enable user overrides and learning feedback loops
2. AI Systems Architecture (Platform-Wide)
Design reusable AI services usable across Buildors modules
Define model orchestration, inference pipelines, and data flows
Establish standards for AI outputs feeding business logic and UX
Ensure scalability for real-world contractor usage (large PDFs, many users)
3. Backend \& API Development
Build AI-driven backend services (Python preferred: FastAPI/Flask)
Expose clean APIs for upload, inference, review, and editing
Integrate AI outputs with Buildors’ estimating and project systems
Design data models for plans, detections, estimates, and revisions
4. Frontend Integration
Support frontend workflows (React/TypeScript)
Enable plan viewing, overlays, and estimate-to-drawing traceability
Ensure fast, intuitive review and editing experiences
5. Cloud, DevOps, and MLOps
Deploy on AWS or GCP with Docker and optional Kubernetes
Design GPU usage strategy for inference and training
Implement CI/CD pipelines
Establish annotation, retraining, and model evaluation workflows
6. Leadership \& Ownership
Work directly with the founder on product and AI roadmap
Translate construction workflows into AI logic
Set engineering standards as the first AI hire
Grow into Head of AI / Technical Co-Founder if successful
Required Qualifications
Area Requirement
Full-Stack Engineering
3+ years building production web apps end-to-end
AI / ML Integration
Real-world experience shipping ML systems
Computer Vision
Object detection (YOLO or similar), image processing
OCR
Tesseract, EasyOCR, or equivalent
Backend
Python, APIs, data modeling
Frontend
React + TypeScript integration experience
Cloud
AWS/GCP, Docker; Kubernetes a plus
Ownership
Comfortable owning systems without hand-holding
Strongly Preferred
Construction tech / AEC exposure
Familiarity with CSI MasterFormat
Startup or zero-to-one product experience
MLOps, labeling pipelines (Label Studio or similar)
Leadership ambition (this grows into a team)
Compensation \& Structure
Initial contract (paid, milestone-based)
Fast path to full-time
Equity or co-founder discussion for the right person
Remote-friendly, outcome-driven
Why This Role Matters
You are not joining an AI experiment. You are defining how AI operates across a multi-product construction platform with real customers and revenue. PlanEstimate is only the beginning—estimating, procurement, scheduling, forecasting, and compliance all follow.
This role has technical authority, product influence, and ownership upside.
One-line summary: This is a rare chance to architect and lead AI across a real construction SaaS platform, starting with PlanEstimate and scaling into a foundational leadership role at Buildors.
Job Types: Full-time, Part-time, Contract
Pay: $50,000.00 - $89,321.54 per year
Work Location: Remote