Computational Design Engineer

ABOUT BUILD

AI for the Built World: Build helps the world's largest real estate and infrastructure institutions find, test and plan sites a magnitude faster than the market. Clients get site sourcing, due diligence, feasibility and test fits delivered in days rather than months, by a team of experts working alongside AI. It covers the projects that matter most: digital infrastructure, energy and industrial, from concept to completion.

Our mission is to accelerate and amplify the world's most important built projects - inventing a better way to build through a collaboration between human experts and AI. We envision a future where the world's buildings are driven from concept to completion. Without delays, cost or complexity. Enabling people to deliver a magnitude more deals. To make decisions, build relationships and create.

We're partnering with the world's biggest built world institutions, from $T alternative asset investors to prolific developers and even governments, to push the frontier of what's possible. We're backed by c-suite from Blackstone and OpenAI alongside the world's best venture capital firms.

Join us in shaping the future of the Built World and exponentially accelerate your career in the process. We welcome you to do your life's work here.

ABOUT THE ROLE

The Computational Design Engineer owns how Build looks, feels and works, and ships it in production code.

This is a design role and an engineering role in equal measure. You'll design the product and the 3D and site design tools behind it, then build them yourself: production React and TypeScript on the front end, and Rhino, Grasshopper and Python for the geometry underneath.

Our clients make big decisions about land, power and buildings. What they see from us has to be clear enough to act on and good enough to defend in an investment committee. You'll design and build the product they use every day, the tools that lay out a site in minutes and the deliverables that land on their desk.

There's no handoff. You sketch it, model it, build it, ship it and watch how clients use it. You'll be the design lead on a small team that ships fast, working directly with James SE and alongside our engineers and domain experts.

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

• Spatial and 3D design tools: the parametric logic, site layouts, 3D views and CAD outputs behind the test fits clients use to decide what a site can hold

• Product design end to end: user flows, interfaces and the details inside them, from first concept to shipped feature

• The front end: building what you design in React and TypeScript, reviewed and shipped to the same standard as our engineers

• The design system: one set of components, type, motion and rules that keeps every surface consistent and lets the whole team ship good work without you in the room

• Making complex work clear: turning maps, site data and multi-step workflows into screens and reports a client can read in a minute and trust

• Everything around the product: flagship demos, the website and the deliverables clients actually receive

• Time with clients: seeing how decisions get made and approved on real projects, and feeding that straight back into what we build

EXAMPLE PROJECTS

• Taking a site layout tool from a working prototype to something a client runs on their own, from the rules that place each block to the screen they adjust it on

• Building a single design package and moving the product onto it

• Redesigning the map so every type of site data reads at a glance

• Turning a complex workflow into an interface a client can follow and defend internally

• Redesigning the decks and drawings we deliver so they read like they came from the best firm in the market

WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR

A designer who engineers. You've trained in architecture, product or computational design, and somewhere along the way you started writing production code yourself. You see systems, not one-off screens, and you'd rather make a tool that produces a hundred good answers than draw one by hand. You have real taste and you're unreasonable about quality, but you ship.

YOU MIGHT BE A FIT IF

• You work in 3D and geometry: Rhino and Grasshopper, Python or C#, Three.js or similar, and you've built tools, not just used them

• You've shipped production front end (React, TypeScript, Next.js) as well as designing it

• You have a few years at a leading architecture, design or engineering practice, or at a product company building design or spatial tools, or your own practice with this at its core

• You've made complex tools simple enough for people who aren't technical to use

• Your portfolio shows both the thinking and the working thing that shipped

• You hold your own with engineers and want to be held to an engineering standard

• You care about AI, software and how the physical world gets built

THIS PROBABLY ISN'T YOU IF

• You can design but not build, or build but have no taste

• You need tightly scoped specs before you can start

• You see polish as optional or the small details as someone else's job

BONUS POINTS

• Experience with masterplanning, site planning or massing studies

• Experience with CAD and drawing output (DXF, layered drawings)

• Experience designing data-heavy, map-based or AI products

• An eye for brand as well as product

• Experience as a founder or the first designer at an early-stage company

HOW TO WIN AT BUILD

Growing Build requires a radically different approach to company building. As a company we're focused on one outcome: winning. That means we move fast, work with intensity and demand excellence from ourselves. We operate with intensity but create an environment that allows for a lot of fun together. The result is that we're one of the fastest shipping teams in vertical AI, partnering with the best to automate the world around us.

Performance and teamwork are the core of Build's operation. We look for those who are able to do both, who often exhibit a particular ability for:

Velocity: You are relentless in asking the right questions to set direction. Once you find the right direction you go all-in.

Excellence: You obsess with being the best. For you, excellence is a non-negotiable standard rather than an aspiration.

Long time horizons: You choose to be in something for the long run, because that's where most of the returns are realized.

Ownership: You take full ownership of the outcomes. You're meticulous in your pursuits and believe you can actively shape your environment rather than adapt to it.

Customers: You have a passion for the built world and those who shape it. You probably have a quirky hobby or story that relates to your love for building.

Integrity: You choose to do the right thing even when it isn't easy.

Trust: You only work with people you can trust because it's the only way to do truly extraordinary things.

Yield: You have a burning need to see a result on every action you take and you're always looking for routes to do more with less.

WHAT WE OFFER

Radical autonomy, real ownership: High standards. Minimal bureaucracy. You own problems end to end, choose how the work gets done and are accountable for exceptional outcomes. Ownership is matched with meaningful, generous equity.

An accelerated founder's track: Build is for builders. If you want to learn what it actually takes to create a generational company - product judgment, execution speed and accountability - there is no faster path than building from zero when everything is up for grabs.

Elite teammates, uncompromising bar: You work with people who think clearly, execute relentlessly and take full ownership. The team you build becomes the company you build. Growth here is not just professional; it reshapes how you operate and in return how Build operates.

Perpetual adventure: We attract the strongest of the strange. Extraordinary experiences are part of the culture - from the food we eat together to the space we occupy. Intensity is intentional.

Shape the built world: We are rebuilding how the physical world gets made. Our software doesn't live in the abstract - it turns into real projects breaking ground because we exist. We work with the largest institutions, push the frontier of AI and watch our decisions translate directly into the world around us.

Location: On-site in New York City or London. We don't hire remote for this role.

Compensation: $160K–$200K plus equity (New York) / £115K–£145K plus equity (London).