Engineering Manager (New Products)

PermitFlow; New York, Northern (NY, KY); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Meaningful equity

Company-paid health coverage

401(k) savings plan

Unlimited PTO and paid family leave

Home office stipend

Lunch and dinner provided

Commuter benefits

Job summary

PermitFlow is an applied AI company redefining construction permitting workflows in the United States. We seek an Engineering Manager, New Products to lead an early-stage product team, move bets from hypothesis to pilot to commercial launch, and own architecture decisions with speed and rigor.

You’ll shape systems that enable scalable growth and cross-functional collaboration. The role emphasizes hands-on leadership, fast decision-making, and delivering end-to-end product lines with a focus on

Qualifications

• 5+ years in software engineering, including 1+ year in engineering leadership.
• Experience shipping a 0-to-1 product or system through to commercial launch.
• Strong system design and architecture fundamentals.
• Ability to lead through ambiguity and communicate across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• High standards for engineering quality, reliability, and performance.
• Bonus: founding engineer or early-stage startup experience.
• Bonus: exposure to complex regulated environments (construction, logistics, government systems, etc.)

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow an engineering team shipping new product lines from zero to commercial launch.
• Build engineering culture through clear expectations, feedback, and career development.
• Translate market hypotheses into technical architecture that can be built and tested quickly.
• Make fast build-vs-buy and scope calls to test a product cheaply.
• Own execution from pilot through commercial launch and handoff to a durable system.
• Improve reliability, observability, and efficiency as products scale.
• Play a key role in hiring and developing future leaders.

Skills

5+ years engineering

1+ year leadership

System design

Architecture fundamentals

Strong communication

Tools

Code review

Architecture decisions

Job description

PermitFlow is redefining how America builds. We’re an applied AI company serving the nation’s builders, tackling one of the largest information challenges in the economy: understanding what can be built, where, and how. Our AI agent workforce helps the fastest-growing construction companies navigate everything from permitting and licensing to inspections and project closeouts - accelerating housing, clean-energy, and infrastructure development across the country.

Despite being a $1.6T industry, construction still suffers from massive delays, wasted capital, and lost opportunity. PermitFlow has already delivered unprecedented speed, accuracy, and visibility to over $20B in development, helping contractors reduce compliance time, de-risk projects, and scale with confidence.

As the U.S. enters a new capex supercycle across data centers, factories, housing, and renewables, joining PermitFlow means building the AI infrastructure at the core of every construction project driving the next wave of reindustrialization.

We’ve raised over $90M, most recently completing our Series B, from top-tier investors including Accel, Kleiner Perkins, Initialized, Y Combinator, Felicis, and Altos Ventures, with backing from leaders at OpenAI, Google, Procore, ServiceTitan, Zillow, PlanGrid, and Uber.

Building the AI Infrastructure for Construction

• Construction remains one of the largest real-world systems still operating on fragmented, manual infrastructure.
• Every project in the U.S. moves through permitting and pre-construction workflows spread across ~20,000 jurisdictions, each with inconsistent rules, systems, and levels of digitization.
• This creates one of the largest bottlenecks in the physical economy, delaying housing and infrastructure projects and costing billions in lost time and capital every year.
• PermitFlow is rebuilding this layer from the ground up, using modern software and AI systems to automate permitting end-to-end.
• Permitting is the gate every construction project's data passes through, giving us a route upstream into design, pricing, and feasibility, and downstream into procurement and scheduling, and a foundation to launch new products from.
• We are still early, and the next set of products we build will define how far this category extends beyond permitting.

Role Overview

• We're looking for an Engineering Manager, New Products to lead the engineering team turning our next product bets into shipped, revenue-generating systems.
• This is a builder-leader role. You will own both people leadership and technical execution for products that don't exist yet, moving from hypothesis to pilot to commercial launch, often on a compressed timeline and with an incomplete spec.
• You will report directly to our VP of Engineering and partner closely with our Product Lead, New Products to turn a market bet into an architecture, then into a working system a customer will pay for. Our VP strongly values hands-on technical leadership. The best-fit EMs here are comfortable making fast, defensible architecture calls with limited information, and just as comfortable running a team.
• You will be expected to drive your own roadmap end-to-end from technical scoping and build-vs-buy calls through delivery and customer impact, ensuring what your team ships is fast enough to test a new market cheaply and solid enough to scale if the bet pays off.

What You’ll Do

You will operate across systems, people, and execution at scale:

• Lead and grow an engineering team shipping new product lines from zero to commercial launch, raising the bar for ownership, quality, and execution speed
• Build strong engineering culture through clear expectations, 1:1s, feedback loops, and career development
• Partner with our Product Lead, New Products to translate an unvalidated market hypothesis into a technical architecture that can be built and tested quickly
• Make fast, pragmatic build-vs-buy and scope calls that let the team test a new product cheaply before over-investing in it
• Own technical execution from pilot through commercial launch, including the handoff to a durable, supportable system once a product line earns dedicated investment
• Improve system reliability, observability, and engineering efficiency as a new product moves from pilot to scale
• Play a key role in hiring and developing engineers who are energized by 0-to-1 ambiguity, and future leaders on the team

What We’re Looking For

We’re looking for strong technical leaders who thrive in high-ownership, high-ambiguity environments.

• 5+ years in software engineering, including 1+ year in engineering leadership
• Direct experience shipping a 0-to-1 product or system in a startup or high-growth environment, ideally through to commercial launch
• Strong system design and architecture fundamentals, with the judgment to build for speed of learning first and durability second, then know when to reverse that order
• Ability to lead through ambiguity and turn an incomplete spec into structured executionStrong communication skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders
• High standards for engineering quality, reliability, and performance despite compressed timelines
• Deep technical fluency: comfortable engaging with code review, architecture, and tradeoffs
• Bonus: founding engineer or early-stage startup experience where you built the first version of a product with minimal process scaffolding
• Bonus: exposure to complex regulated environments (construction, logistics, government systems, etc.)

Why This Role Matters

This is not a maintenance role - it is a systems-building role at the foundation of a category being created in real time.

PermitFlow sits at the intersection of:

• fragmented real-world regulatory infrastructure
• high-friction physical economy workflows
• emerging AI systems capable of automating end-to-end complexity

The products built here extend PermitFlow beyond permitting into the adjacent workflows construction teams already trust us with.

This role offers rare leverage: your technical calls will decide how fast we can test new markets, and your team's execution will decide which of those bets becomes a durable product line.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity in a high-growth company
• 100% company-paid base medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees + healthcare FSA
• 401(k) savings plan
• Unlimited PTO and paid family leave
• Home office & equipment stipend
• Daily in-office lunch and dinner provided
• Commuter benefits (pre-tax transit and parking)

If you want to build complex systems connecting software to real-world infrastructure and help define a category from the ground up, we’d love to talk.

Inside PermitFlow: The Team Transforming Construction Permitting

PermitFlow provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or family status, as protected by applicable law.

We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities. All employment decisions are based on merit, qualifications, and business needs.