About PermitFlow

PermitFlow is building AI agents for the $1.6T construction industry. We're creating the leading pre-construction platform, starting with the $12B permitting market.

Our platform automates the slow, manual permitting process for builders, handling everything from jurisdiction research to application preparation, submission, and real-time tracking. By turning fragmented regulations and workflows into structured, intelligent systems, we help contractors move faster, reduce risk, and scale with confidence.

We've raised over $36.5M with Kleiner Perkins leading our Series A, with participation from Initialized Capital, Y Combinator, Felicis Ventures, and Altos Ventures. Our backers include founders and executives from OpenAI, Google, Procore, ServiceTitan, Zillow, PlanGrid, Uber, and more.

We are a team of architects, engineers, permitting experts, and product builders who know the pain of pre-construction firsthand and are committed to solving it. Demand is growing faster than we can keep up, and we're looking for top talent to help us scale.

Our HQ is in New York City with a hybrid schedule (3 in-office days per week). We prefer NYC-based candidates or those open to relocation.

• What You'll Do

We are seeking an Applied Machine Learning Engineer to design, prototype, and ship intelligent systems that enhance our core permitting workflows - from document understanding and data extraction to compliance automation. You'll be instrumental in designing and scaling LLM-powered features and retrieval systems to extract, analyze, and structure complex permitting data. This is a high-impact, high-autonomy role where you'll help define the technical foundation of our ML stack and influence product direction from day one. Design, implement, and optimize LLM-powered models for document processing, data extraction, and permit application workflows. Develop and optimize retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines to improve query processing and information retrieval. Rapidly prototype and fine-tune pre-trained models to solve real-world permitting NLP tasks such as document classification and entity recognition. Build scalable machine learning infrastructure, integrating with backend systems to support AI-driven workflows. Work with large-scale structured and unstructured data to ensure efficient indexing, retrieval, and contextual relevance. Own the full ML lifecycle - from experimentation and evaluation to deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement. Identify high-impact opportunities for ML by strategically balancing rule-based, retrieval, and ML-driven approaches to build fast, maintainable, and scalable systems. Apply state-of-the-art LLM and NLP techniques to production workflows - prioritizing performance, reliability, and impact over novelty. Collaborate cross-functionally with engineering, product, and domain experts to shape AI-native solutions for complex regulatory challenges. What We're Looking For 5+ years of experience in machine learning engineering, with a strong track record of deploying and scaling models in production environments. Deep expertise in natural language processing and large language models (e.g., OpenAI GPT, Claude, Hugging Face models). Practical experience with retrieval systems (e.g., FAISS, Elasticsearch, vector databases). Proficient in Python and ML frameworks like PyTorch, TensorFlow, and ecosystem tools like scikit-learn. Proven experience applying machine learning to real-world systems, with a strong focus on delivering measurable business impact. Experience with ML model deployment, monitoring, and scaling in a cloud environment (AWS, GCP, or Azure). Strong architectural thinking, ability to reason across the full ML stack, and a bias for shipping fast and iterating. Comfortable working in fast-moving, ambiguous startup environments with a high degree of ownership and autonomy. Benefits Equity packages Competitive Salary 100% Paid health, dental & vision coverage Home office & equipment stipend Lunch & Dinner provided via UberEats w/ a fully stocked kitchen Commuter benefits Team building events Unlimited PTO