Founding AI Engineer

Clearpath; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary ($120k-$200k)

Generous early-stage equity (0.5%-2%)

Free lunch and dinner at the office

Fully paid health insurance with HSA contributions

401(k) with pre-tax and Roth contributions

Commuter benefits account

Monthly wellness benefit

Opportunity to shape the future of our country

Job summary

Clearpath in San Francisco is hiring a Founding AI Engineer to help scale AI solutions across the country. The engineer will contribute to optimizing multimodal AI agents and run cutting-edge experiments that influence construction compliance with U.S. building codes.

The position offers a competitive salary range of $120k-$200k, generous equity, fully paid health insurance, free meals, and a rigorous interview process designed for thorough evaluation.

Qualifications

• Cracked SWE passionate about growing as an ML/AI Engineer or a cracked ML Engineer fast at prototyping.
• Ability to run experiments quickly and develop internal compass for testing hypotheses.
• Mission-oriented with consideration for America's ability to build.

Responsibilities

• Design and execute experiments to improve AI agents, building and testing new tools.
• Regularly communicate with users and test the product.
• Work on computer vision experiments, lightweight data engineering, and internal tooling.

Skills

Experience with AI/ML technologies

Fast prototyping skills

Strong problem-solving ability

Curiosity in understanding building codes

Job description

Founding AI Engineer

San Francisco | Engineering | In office | Full-time

Mason AI has cracked a research problem that went unsolved for over half a century: automatically checking blueprints for compliance with the building codes. The challenge is that over a hundred thousand pages of building codes and referenced standards govern blueprints, and this complexity bottlenecks construction in America.

We’re looking for a Founding AI/ML Engineer to help us scale what works for residential projects in California to all construction across the country.

You will go deep on the cutting edge of optimizing multimodal AI agents; you will hillclimb on computer vision evals; and you will run time-boxed experiments that are high-risk, high-reward. You will become a domain expert on the ADA, Wildland-Urban Interfaces, and other wonky parts of the building code. Your work will directly affect the built environment of California within the first month of joining.

You will have a massive impact on the product, the company's future, and the country's, as we accelerate American construction. Join us.

Who you are

• Either a cracked SWE passionate about growing as an ML/AI Engineer, or a cracked ML Engineer who’s fast at prototyping.
• You can run experiments quickly and develop an internal compass to estimate which hypotheses have the highest expected value to test.
• You're mission‑oriented and looking for your life's work. You care about America’s ability to build.
• You love ownership and don’t mind ambiguity or unblocking yourself.
• You have the curiosity of a policy wonk to digest building codes and architectural diagrams.

What you’ll do

• 60+% of your time will be spent designing and executing experiments to improve AI agents – you’ll build and test new tools, fine‑tune models, optimize prompts, and more.
• Talk to users and dogfood the product weekly.
• Wear hats as needed on topics ranging from running computer vision experiments, lightweight data engineering, building internal tooling, improving the webapp, and more.

Our operating principles

• Fail fast and cheap. Slugging percentage matters more than batting average.
• We can make a lot of mistakes as long as we get a few things right.
• A written culture – we document our thinking on the few things that matter most.
• Internal tooling is a first‑class use of time.
• In‑person work is a must.

Benefits

• Competitive salary ($120k‑$200k).
• Generous early‑stage equity (0.5%‑2%).
• Free lunch and dinner (after 7 pm) at the office.
• Fully paid health insurance with over $1000/year in employer contributions to an HSA.
• A 401(k) that accepts pre‑tax and Roth contributions.
• A commuter benefits account and a monthly wellness benefit.
• Opportunity to shape the future of our country.

Interview process

We aim to make this happen in 2‑3 weeks:

• Initial call (30 min) – Informal chat on your interests and experience.
• Take‑home exercise (Week) – We’ll give you a week to find building code violations in a floorplan. In so doing, you’ll learn about the building codes and architectural diagrams, and gain a sense for how to automate this work.
• Coding Challenge (60 min) – Designed to mirror real work you’d do at Mason, you’ll build a prototype for a slice of our product. AI coding tools are strongly encouraged.
• Cultural fit interview (30 min) – Learn more about how you’ve navigated challenges in (or outside) of work.
• Paid work trial (3‑5 days) – We’ll set you up to run evals for our multimodal agent on our repo, and we’ll ask you to generate hypotheses for experiments to run, run those experiments, and then analyze them. You’ll be evaluated on your speed at running thoughtful experiments. We do reference calls in parallel.
• Full‑time offer