Structured AI Seeks Mechanical Design Engineer to Productize Engineering Intelligence

Structured AI, a Y Combinator-backed startup building AI agents for construction design engineering, is seeking a Mechanical Design Engineer to join their founding team. The role offers a salary of $80,000-$85,000 for full-time positions or competitive hourly rates for consulting arrangements.

The company is addressing a fundamental inefficiency in construction engineering: engineers currently spend countless hours manually checking thousands of drawings for tiny mistakes that lead to massive rework costs. Structured AI's solution involves building AI agents that understand complex mechanical, electrical, structural, and civil drawings to automatically perform high-precision QA/QC, code compliance, and design consistency checks.

Role Overview

The Mechanical Design Engineer position sits at the intersection of professional engineering judgment and frontier AI. Rather than simply performing engineering tasks, the role focuses on "productizing engineering intelligence" - translating the nuances of HVAC systems, building codes, and MEP coordination into autonomous AI agents.

Working directly with the CTO and CPO, the engineer will encode complex mechanical logic and industry standards into structured patterns that AI agents can execute. This involves weekly feature testing and shipping, ensuring outputs meet a "PE-level" bar of excellence, and leading technical delivery of AI-produced reports for enterprise clients.

Core Responsibilities

• Encode Expertise: Translate complex mechanical logic and industry standards into structured patterns for AI execution
• Product Co-Design: Partner with engineering to test features, ship weekly, and ensure outputs meet professional standards
• Strategic Delivery: Lead technical delivery of AI-produced reports for enterprise clients, identifying edge cases that drive model iteration
• Customer Front-Lines: Join technical discovery with top-tier MEP firms to map their internal standards and pain points
• Scale Systems: Identify recurring design patterns across massive datasets to build automated "checks" into the core platform

Ideal Candidate Profile

The company seeks an industry veteran with 2+ years at a construction or MEP firm who has experienced the pain of manual reviews and Revit-based documentation firsthand. The ideal candidate has a proven track record of performing formal peer reviews and catching errors others miss.

Key attributes include being a systems thinker who can abstract patterns from specific projects into universal engineering logic, and having a hacker mindset - being a clear, structured communicator naturally inclined to automate workflows.

Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• Experience with multi-disciplinary coordination (Mechanical, Electrical, Structural)
• Familiarity with AI/ML tools or early-stage startup environments
• CPT eligibility for visa considerations

Company Vision

Structured AI's long-term vision is ambitious: becoming the go-to software platform for design engineers. Starting with quality-controlling plans today, the company aims to eventually generate and optimize them tomorrow. This progression involves developing next-generation computer vision systems, autonomous workflows, and ultimately true AI co-designers.

The company was founded in 2025 as part of Y Combinator's F25 batch and currently operates with a team of 7 people. They're positioning themselves at the forefront of applying AI to one of construction's most persistent challenges - the manual, time-consuming process of quality assurance in engineering design.

Application Process

Candidates can apply directly through the YC platform to connect with the founding team. The role offers the opportunity to shape the product direction of a company tackling a massive inefficiency in the construction industry while working at the cutting edge of AI and engineering integration.

For engineers who have lived the frustration of late-night drawing reviews and see the potential for AI to transform construction engineering workflows, this role offers a chance to be part of building that future from the ground up.