Building Preservation Research Lead

You will lead the research that sits underneath Wren. That is the body of knowledge about how buildings age, how their fabric is repaired or replaced, how landmarks commissions and building departments evaluate work, and how the licensed professions protect buildings across generations. Our product is only as good as this research, and this role owns it.

The work is part scholarship, part fieldwork, part writing. You will read the statutes and guidelines that govern historic fabric in New York, London, and Toronto. You will walk buildings with the architects and engineers who steward them. You will write the internal reference material that the rest of the team uses to reason about any building on our system.

This is a senior research role. You will not be writing code. You will be setting what we know, and making sure that what the product claims to know is actually true.

You will work directly with the founder and with the engineering team building Wren. You will also build an external advisory network of practicing preservation architects, conservation engineers, and historians, and you will be expected to maintain those relationships as a serious part of the role.

In the first year you will stand up the research practice as a function of the company. You will produce the canonical internal references for how Wren should reason about landmark designation, historic material compatibility, facade inspection cycles, and the filing pathways specific to protected buildings. You will set the standard for how a research memo is written here, and you will review every significant claim the system makes against the underlying primary sources.

You will also shape the research agenda. That means deciding what we need to study next, commissioning that study internally or with outside collaborators, and making sure the findings flow back into the product in a form the agent can actually use. Expect to publish occasional public research under the Aedifice imprint, because a real research practice is visible to its peers.

A licensed architect, conservation architect, or senior preservation specialist with at least a decade of serious work on historic buildings. You have navigated a landmarks commission. You have written a conditions assessment that a licensed engineer would recognize as the real thing. You know the difference between a facade inspection that protects the public and one that protects a file.

In character, we are looking for someone who reads the guidelines for pleasure, who writes carefully, and who is willing to say "we do not know that yet" when that is the honest answer. You will be setting the epistemic standard for the whole company. That is a role for someone who is more interested in being right than in being cited.

Published research in preservation, conservation, or architectural history. Experience working with or inside a Landmarks Preservation Commission process. A reading knowledge of preservation practice outside the US.

Compensation comparable to a senior principal at a well-regarded preservation practice, plus early-stage equity on a standard four-year schedule, full health and dental, 401(k) with match, five weeks of paid time off, and a research budget. NYC-based, with an expectation of regular time on real buildings.