AI Engineer - Assistant Experience

BUILD; New York, Northern (NY, KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Radical autonomy

Equity

Accelerated track

Elite teammates

Perpetual adventure

Shape built world

Job summary

Build is seeking a software engineer to wire grading into the execution path, and to build the memory layer that makes Dougie smarter with every run. You will own Dougie's behavior in production, expanding capabilities across Build's ontology for digital labor and refining agent orchestration, tool use, and recovery from partial failure.

Join a fast-moving team that values autonomy, ownership, and practical results, and help accelerate the reliability and effectiveness of automated workflows

Responsibilities

• Own Dougie's behavior in production, including when it goes wrong
• Wire grading and evaluation directly into the execution path, so runs improve themselves
• Build the memory layer that carries institutional context across sessions
• Instrument human-in-the-loop time and drive it down deliberately
• Improve agent orchestration - planning, tool use, recovery from partial failure
• Build the feedback path from expert correction back into system behaviour
• Debug non-deterministic systems rigorously rather than by intuition
• Own Dougie's capabilities end-to-end across Build's ontology for digital labor

Job description

A new type of firm: Build partners with Index to accelerate institutional development with AI. Learn More

AI for the Built World: Build has created the agentic AI stack for institutional real estate, automating complex development and acquisitions workflows 90% faster than humans to accelerate the world's most important built projects - digital infrastructure, energy, 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 agentic AI. We envision a future where the world's buildings are driven from concept to completion, autonomously. Without delays, cost, and complexity. Enabling people to deliver a magnitude more deals. To make decisions, build relationships and create.

To start, we're partnering with the world's biggest built world institutions from $T alternative assets investors, 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

Dougie is Build's agent harness - the agent that executes workflows, grades outputs, and holds institutional context across sessions. Right now Dougie is capable but not compounding: what it learns in one run does not reliably make the next one better.

This role closes that loop. You will wire grading into execution, build the memory layer that makes Dougie smarter with every run, and close the gap between what Dougie can do in a demo and what it does reliably in production.

You are accountable for human-in-the-loop time dropping every week.

You can expect to:

• Own and expand Dougie's capabilities end-to-end across Build's ontology for digital labor.
• Wire grading and evaluation directly into the execution path, so runs improve themselves
• Build the memory layer that carries institutional context across sessions
• Instrument human-in-the-loop time and drive it down deliberately
• Improve agent orchestration - planning, tool use, recovery from partial failure
• Build the feedback path from expert correction back into system behaviour
• Debug non-deterministic systems rigorously rather than by intuition
• Own Dougie's behavior in production, including when it goes wrong

The individual we're looking for has built agentic systems that run unattended with real consequences attached, and treats memory, context and retrieval as engineering problems rather than buzzwords.

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 chose 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 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.