Project Architect - Modular Construction (San Diego)

About us

Clever is a California HCD-licensed factory-built housing manufacturer. We design and build park model RVs, ADUs, and modular homes, with production in Ensenada, Baja California, just south of San Diego. Our units ship to sites across the U.S., which means every project lands in a different jurisdiction, under a different code cycle, in front of a different plan checker.

The role

You own the permit. Concept design through submittal and approval, for a portfolio of projects running at the same time.

You'll work with our drafting and factory-based architectural team team — but this is not a role where you review other people's work and sign it. You draw too. On a small team, the person who owns the project is the person who opens Revit. We need someone who picks up whatever the project needs and moves it forward.

What you'll do

• Take projects from concept through permit submittal and approval, including plan check comments and resubmittals
• Produce drawings yourself in Revit — floor plans, elevations, sections, details, schedules — and direct the drafting team on the rest
• Coordinate with the factory team in Ensenada to turn design intent into working drawings, and absorb their constructability feedback back into the model
• Act as the primary design contact for customers: kickoff, options, revisions, and honest expectation-setting on timeline
• Route each project down the right approval path — HCD insignia (factory-built housing / commercial modular), ANSI A119.5 park model, or local building department for foundations, utilities, and site work
• Coordinate residential MEP: DWV and supply layout, panel schedules and circuiting, load calcs, HVAC sizing and duct routing — drawing it directly or directing outside consultants
• Manage Title 24 energy compliance and coordinate structural, civil, and energy consultants
• Keep up to 30 active projects moving on permit timelines that can stretch 6–18 months, and keep every customer informed along the way. That number is high by traditional firm standards and it works here for a specific reason: the buildings repeat. You're not designing 30 custom homes — you're taking a known product through 30 different jurisdictions, backed by a standard detail library and a drafting team.
• Build and maintain our Revit families, templates, and standard detail library so each repeat of a product gets faster than the last
  

What you bring

Required

• Professional degree in architecture or equivalent experience, plus 5+ years producing permit sets
• Strong Revit — modeling, sheet setup, families, annotation, and keeping a model clean enough for someone else to pick up
• Working knowledge of residential MEP — enough to lay it out, coordinate it, and catch conflicts before a plan checker does
• A track record running many concurrent projects on long timelines without dropping any of them
• Direct client communication — you can explain a code constraint to a homeowner without jargon and without condescension
• Willingness to learn factory-built housing regulation fast. The rules here are well defined — HCD Title 25, ANSI A119.5, state insignia programs, local siting requirements — there are just a lot of them, and they differ from site-built practice. You don't need to know them coming in. You do need to get fluent quickly.
• Small-team, get-it-done attitude. No layers, no handoffs to a department that doesn't exist.
• Willingness to travel to the factory in Ensenada and occasionally to project sites

Nice to have

• Based in or near San Diego — ideal, given how close the factory is
• California Building Code fluency (CBC, CRC, Title 24 Parts 6 and 11)
• HCD Title 25, ANSI A119.5, or HUD-code manufactured housing experience
• Prefab, modular, or panelized background — transport limits, factory tolerances, marriage lines, factory/site scope splits
• Licensed in California, or on the path
• ADU and small-lot entitlement experience (state ADU law, SB 9, SB 684, local ordinances)
• Conversational Spanish for working with the factory team
• AutoCAD, Bluebeam, Enscape or Twinmotion
  

Why this role is different

• Your work repeats. Unlike a traditional firm, our designs ship over and over. Solve a detail once and it shows up in hundreds of homes.
• Full ownership. Drawings, permit, customer, factory handoff. One person carries it end to end.
• A real feedback loop. You'll see your drawings built on a production line and hear directly when a detail doesn't work.
  

Logistics

• Location: Remote, with travel to our factory in Ensenada, Baja California. Candidates near San Diego preferred.
• Type: Full-time
  

How to apply

• Send a resume and 2–3 permit sets you personally drew (redacted is fine). Tell us about the ugliest permitting situation you talked your way through.