Product Manager, AI (Staff/Principal)

Job description

PermitFlow is redefining how America builds. We’re an applied AI company serving the nation’s builders, tackling one of the largest information challenges in the economy: understanding what can be built, where, and how. Our AI agent workforce helps the fastest-growing construction companies navigate everything from permitting and licensing to inspections and project closeouts – accelerating housing, clean-energy, and infrastructure development across the country. Despite being a $1.6T industry, construction still suffers from massive delays, wasted capital, and lost opportunity. PermitFlow has already delivered unprecedented speed, accuracy, and visibility to over $20B in development, helping contractors reduce compliance time, de-risk projects, and scale with confidence. As the U.S. enters a new capex supercycle across data centers, factories, housing, and renewables, joining PermitFlow means building the AI infrastructure at the core of every construction project driving the next wave of reindustrialization. We’ve raised over $90M, most recently completing our Series B, https://www.permitflow.com/blog/permitflow-series-b from top-tier investors including Accel, Kleiner Perkins https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7401703305569275904/, Initialized, Y Combinator, Felicis, and Altos Ventures, with backing from leaders at OpenAI, Google, Procore, ServiceTitan, Zillow, PlanGrid, and Uber. BUILDING THE AI INFRASTRUCTURE FOR CONSTRUCTION - Construction is one of the largest industries in the world - and one of the most operationally fragmented. - Before anything gets built, projects must move through permitting and pre-construction workflows spread across ~20,000 jurisdictions, each with different rules, systems, and processes. - The result is a massive bottleneck slowing down housing and infrastructure across the country. - PermitFlow is rebuilding this layer from the ground up - using modern software and AI systems to automate and orchestrate permitting end-to-end. - We are still early. The product surface area is expanding rapidly, the workflows are deeply complex, and the opportunity to shape how this industry operates is enormous. - This is one of those rare moments where product decisions directly influence how the physical world gets built. LOCATION - Our HQ is in New York City with a hybrid schedule (Monday, Wednesday and Friday in-office). We prefer NYC-based candidates or those open to relocation. ROLE OVERVIEW - We're hiring a Product Manager, AI to own PermitFlow's core AI infrastructure and workflow agents. This is a role that will require UX and technical acumen to deliver high quality agents in a genuinely complex domain, while also up-leveling our core agentic infrastructure and data flywheel. - Submitting a permit means comprehending construction documents, extracting project details, confirming every requirement has been met and often filling in pdf forms. Errors compound across steps and a failed submission adds real cost for our customers as projects slow. - In this context, you will be asked to deeply familiarize yourself with PermitFlow’s users, customers and use-cases, so you can develop a blended strategy, supporting single-shot full automation where possible and utilizing human-in-the-loop patterns where human judgment is still required. This is not an incremental role, we are looking for someone who can have a major impact in how fast construction gets done in America, Canada and beyond. - The ideal candidate will mix an exceptional history of product delivery with true experience building AI and Agentic infrastructure from the ground up. You ship quickly, instrument everything, hold a high quality bar, and stay close to the users of what you build. - This role reports directly to our Head of Product. We're hiring at Staff or Principal, with the level based on past experience and interview performance. WHAT YOU’LL DO You will operate across agent design, evaluation, and operational execution: - Deliver our core set of workflow agents for permitting, enabling rapid comprehension of construction projects and accurate compliance submissions for permits and inspections - Define what "reliable enough to submit" means at both the field and submission level, and own the quality bar that gates release - Own our path to full automation, segmenting use cases and driving to single-shot submission where accuracy allows - Design the architecture for assistive use cases, building the agents and tools that empower permit coordinators to move faster where humans-in-the-loop is the best solution - Work with our operations org to build an evaluation and data flywheel through early testing, golden data set generation, and structured error analysis ahead of submission - Build a durable design system around our data flywheel, ensuring that users can easily provide feedback on our Agents & AI products - Build the internal toolset for testing, error analysis, and hill climbing that every team at PermitFlow uses to ship agentic work - Serve as the internal applied AI expert for teams coming from more traditional software backgrounds WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR We're looking for product leaders who have shipped AI into production in domains where accuracy carries real-world consequences. - 7+ years of product management experience, or an equivalent track record in forward deployed engineering, applied research, or operations leadership - Direct ownership of the quality bar for a shipped AI/Agentic system - Hands-on experience building evaluations, including experience with golden data sets, LLM-as-judge, human annotation, and online monitoring - Judgment on when to build an agent and when a simpler product or process change delivers more - Deep technical fluency and comfortable engaging engineering on technical concepts - Track record of partnering closely with operations teams and translating operational insight into product - Ability to operate effectively in ambiguity and create clarity for cross-functional teams - High sense of ownership, urgency, and accountability - Track record of high quality delivery and increased scope across multiple roles WHAT WE OFFER - Competitive salary and meaningful equity in a high-growth company - 100% company-paid base medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees + healthcare FSA - 401(k) savings plan - Unlimited PTO and paid family leave - Home office & equipment stipend - Daily in-office lunch and dinner provided - Commuter benefits (pre-tax transit and parking) CLOSING If you’re excited by the opportunity to build AI-powered products that simplify complex real-world workflows - and want to help define a category from the ground up - we’d love to talk. Inside PermitFlow: The Team Transforming Construction Permitting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbxs_TzlTTo PermitFlow provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or family status, as protected by applicable law. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities. All employment decisions are based on merit, qualifications, and business needs.