Founding Engineer

1zu100; München; Hybrid; EUR 60,000 - 70,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

First-hire equity

Job summary

1zu100 in Germany is hiring a founding engineer to build end-to-end AI planning for large residential buildings. Munich on-site; you will own the system from infra to model outputs, with equity for the first hire. The role starts August 1, 2026, with a salary range of €60-70k.

You will work in a small, high-agency team on real projects that ship immediately and integrate with BIM/IFC toolchains for automated modeling.

Qualifications

• Experience building large-scale AI planning systems.
• Ability to turn messy planning data into structured context for models.
• Proven track record in delivering end-to-end ML/model-based solutions.

Responsibilities

• Harness engineering: build the layer around the model for stable, code-compliant outputs.
• Data and context: convert CAD/BIM data, PDFs, site surveys into traceable context.
• Model representation: design floorplan representations that stay editable and rule-compliant.
• Agent evaluation: create eval harness with datasets, rubrics and tests.
• Model iteration: benchmark against state‑of‑the‑art, drive improvements.
• BIM/IFC automation: connect to RevIt/ArchiCAD for automated modeling.

Skills

Systems engineering

Data & context handling

Model evaluation

Architectural design thinking

Tools

Revit

ArchiCAD

IFC

CAD/BIM data handling

Job description

1zu100's mission is to make construction dramatically faster, and we're starting with planning.

About 1zu100

We're building the first AI planning firm in Germany. Our architects make the design decisions. Our agents reason through constraints, generate options, and accelerate the workflow from feasibility to design. We're already planning large projects with leading German architects.

We are looking for one cracked founding engineer to help us build the AI that plans large residential buildings end to end: the agents, the infrastructure, the evals, and the models themselves. You will work in a small, high-agency team on real projects that ship right away. Munich, on-site. €60-70k + first-hire equity. Starts 1 August 2026.

You can expect to

Build and run the multi-agent systems that take messy planning data (drawings, specs, site constraints, building codes) and turn it into real deliverables across the planning workflow.

• Own the system end to end, from infrastructure and orchestration to context and memory to the models themselves. We fine-tune our own models for architectural design, so the outputs stay reliable on complex planning work even at scale.
• Build sharp instincts for how architects and construction engineers think, how buildings are actually planned and detailed, and what it takes to produce outputs they'll trust and put their stamp on.

Key responsibilities

• Harness engineering: You build the layer around the model (memory, tool orchestration, verification, drawing and document generation) so the output stays consistent and code-compliant at scale.
• Data and context: You take messy project data (CAD/BIM models, PDFs, site surveys, regulatory texts) and turn it into the right context at each phase, always traceable back to its source.
• Model and design space: You decide how to represent floorplans (graphs of rooms and connections, or token grids) so the output stays editable and architectural rules (room sizes, adjacency, circulation, egress) hold up during generation.
• Agent evaluation and monitoring: You build the internal eval harness (datasets, rubrics, regression tests, monitoring) to track agent performance on real planning tasks.
• Model iteration and benchmarking: You evaluate the model against current state‑of‑the‑art approaches in plan generation, establish benchmarks for success, and iterate to push performance beyond existing methods.
• BIM and IFC automation: You connect to the architect's toolchain (Revit, ArchiCAD, etc.) to drive automated modeling and ensure clean interoperability.

Helpful, not required

We care about what you have built and what you cannot stop thinking about, not your degree or your grades. High agency is a given here: you find the work yourself and move fast. Experience with any of these is a plus:

• Revit, IFC, or Grasshopper experience (ex‑Autodesk welcome).
• RL and optimization (MCTS, GRPO, RLHF) for guiding generation under complex constraints.
• Diffusion models (discrete or continuous) and guided generation techniques.

What we offer

• €60-70k + equity, with first‑hire upside.
• Work on real projects that ship right away.
• Mission‑driven environment with a steep learning curve: experiment, ship and learn.
• You build right alongside the founders, in the same codebase on the same hard problems. Munich, on‑site, full‑time, starts 1 August 2026.
• Join us for trial work lasting 2 days on‑site at our Munich office. We pick a problem together beforehand and build it side by side, so both of us see how we actually work together and whether joining 1zu100 feels right for you and us.