Senior Project Architect

Cover designs, engineers, permits, manufactures, and builds custom modern homes in Southern California from its Gardena, Los Angeles factory. Its building system is a small, carefully developed kit of parts used to produce fully custom single-family homes and ADUs tailored to each client's site and preferences. The role is a project architect role: you run the job, carrying each project from signed contract to ready-to-install. A meaningful share of current work is fire rebuilds, so fire-zone requirements and rebuild-lot judgment are core to the job. The role reports to Greg Nielsen, Head of Product Engineering. The role is fully onsite at the factory and HQ in Gardena, with no remote or hybrid option.

Responsibilities

Run each project from signed contract to ready-to-install across a portfolio of 15 to 30 concurrent projects; Work with the internal software team to automate and improve work product; Own the per-project technical site integration design including siting, grading and drainage, retaining and hillside conditions, deck and landscape integrations, and utility routing; Value-engineer site work to meet client budgets; Build the library of repeating site details; Manage geotech, civil, survey, and other external consultants, including scope, procurement, scheduling, redlines, and integration into submittal packages; Run the client-side track in parallel with the agency track, including decision materials, sign-offs, and scope changes; Own permit package production and QA across the portfolio; Drive the automated set-generation pipeline; Manage submittals, corrections responses, and resubmittals across LADBS and other Southern California jurisdictions; Maintain schedules linking approval milestones to manufacturing and installation planning; Create tracking, playbooks, and tooling for portfolio status visibility; Document architectural and regulatory logic for automation; Conduct periodic site visits to check complex site scopes against drawings and address non-conforming conditions; Own responses to subcontractor RFIs

Requirements

Licensed Architect in California; 7+ years of experience; A systematizer by compulsion with a demonstrated history of turning repeated work into templates, standards, and tools; Expected use of advanced AI tools for leverage throughout workflow; Experience permitting a high volume of projects, with preference for single family residential; Site design and integration experience including grading, drainage, constrained and hillside lots; Civil, geotech, and survey coordination experience; Built construction administration experience; Strong detail-oriented technical strength and ability to operate at an excellent technical level autonomously; Proactively manage and front timelines, risks, and unknowns; Communicate options and tradeoffs, including cost and schedule impacts, to non-technical audiences including clients; Organized and effective at managing project complexity across a large concurrent portfolio; Personal experience taking permit sets through plan check and corrections across multiple California jurisdictions

Nice to have

Design-build delivery; Stormwater / SWPPP / ESCP; MEP coordination; Structural concepts; Scripting or parametric workflows; Modular or offsite construction; Cost estimating; Off-grid experience

Benefits

Equity through stock options; Discretionary annual bonus; Health and fitness reimbursements; High-quality company-subsidized healthcare; 401(k); Generous paid time off (PTO)