Applied Machine Learning Engineer

Overview

Applied Machine Learning Engineer role s position focuses on developing ML foundations for Permit Flow’s AI agents and driving end-to-end ML lifecycle from research to production deployment.

$/yr - $/yr

About Permit Flow Permit Flow is redefining how America builds. Pre-construction remains one of the most broken and manual parts of the $1.6T construction industry, causing delays, wasted capital, and lost opportunity across the built world. Our AI workforce delivers speed, accuracy, and visibility to pre-construction — accelerating housing development, enabling clean-energy projects, and driving economic growth in communities nationwide. We’ve powered over $20B in real estate development, helping builders and contractors move faster, reduce risk, and scale with confidence.

We are entering hypergrowth with clear product-market fit and a world-class team from top AI and construction companies. We’ve raised over $36.5M from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Initialized Capital, Y Combinator, Felicis Ventures, and Altos Ventures, alongside backers from OpenAI, Google, Procore, Service Titan, Zillow, Plan Grid, and Uber. Our HQ is in New York City with a hybrid schedule (3 in-office days per week).

Preference for NYC-based candidates or those open to relocation.

• Design, implement, and optimize LLM-powered models for document processing, data extraction, and permit workflow automation
• Develop retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and search/retrieval systems for jurisdictional and regulatory data
• Rapidly prototype, fine-tune, and evaluate pre-trained models for real-world NLP tasks like classification, entity recognition, and summarization
• Build scalable ML infrastructure and backend services, integrating models into production systems that power AI agents
• Work with large structured and unstructured datasets to improve indexing, retrieval, and contextual accuracy
• Own the full ML lifecycle: experimentation, deployment, monitoring, evaluation, and iteration
• Balance ML, retrieval, and rule-based approaches to ship reliable, maintainable, and high-impact AI features
• Collaborate with engineering, product, and domain experts to shape ML-powered solutions for complex pre-construction challenges

• 5+ years of experience in machine learning engineering, with production ML experience
• Deep expertise in NLP and LLMs (OpenAI GPT, Claude, Hugging Face models)
• Experience building retrieval and vector search systems (e.g., FAISS, Elasticsearch, Pinecone, Weaviate)
• Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks like PyTorch or Tensor Flow
• Strong track record of deploying and scaling ML systems with measurable business impact
• Experience with cloud ML infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Strong system design and architectural thinking, with a bias toward shipping and iterating quickly
• Comfort operating in fast-moving startup environments with high ownership and autonomy

• 📈 Competitive salary and meaningful equity
• 🩺 100% paid health, dental, and vision coverage
• 💻 Company laptop and equipment stipend
• 🍽️ Daily meals via Uber Eats and a fully stocked kitchen
• 🚍 Commuter benefits
• 🎤 Team building events and offsites
• 🌴 Unlimited PTO

Compensation Range: $175K - $245K

• Mid-Senior level

• Full-time

• Engineering and Information Technology
• Industries:
  Software Development

Referral notices and external postings may follow; for the purpose of this description, only the core job information above is retained.