Fabrication Architect / Engineer, Mass Timber Factory

Who are we?

Sidewalk Labs is an urban innovation company working to make cities more sustainable and affordable for all. We create products, invest in new companies, and help plan innovative places around the world. Since our founding in 2015, we’ve grown into an organization of over 100 employees based primarily in New York City. Our cross-disciplinary team consists of experts from real estate, urban planning, government, investments, technology, and engineering, among other backgrounds.

We’ve launched innovative companies addressing urban mobility, next-generation infrastructure, and community-based healthcare, and invested in startups working on everything from robotic furniture to digital electricity. We continue to work internally on projects such as factory-made mass timber construction that can improve housing affordability and sustainability, a digital master-planning tool designed to help developers and communities achieve shared objectives, and a new approach to all-electric neighborhoods.

With the potential to catalyze and scale new models for sustainable and affordable growth, our work is both exciting and complex. We are working to achieve something unprecedented — help us build it!

To date, we've incubated and invested in multiple companies focused on solving urban problems.

We now seek to create an offsite construction company delivering high-quality mass timber buildings for more sustainable living and working. The company's end-to-end approach will combine craft design and advanced manufacturing to produce customizable building components with speed and certainty, which will then be combined with a delivery approach where we work with established construction leaders to deliver complete projects. It will be based in the Pacific Northwest. This company’s efforts will include:

• Using advanced digital manufacturing techniques to deliver a better product, faster, at a price point that is competitive with traditional construction techniques.
• Producing prefabricated mass timber components (floor cassettes, structural members, facade panels, and walls), which will be transported to a customer’s development site for assembly.
• Being a solutions provider that will work with best-in-class builders to deliver complete projects to developers with a goal of making a timber building the “easy” choice.

With the potential to catalyze and scale new models for inclusive growth, our work is both highly exciting and complex. We are working to achieve something unprecedented — help us build it!

What is the role?

In this new role you will be an early member of our factory team. As part of the Production group, you will ultimately be creating the physical product by translating our architectural product design into manufacturing; you will make the promise of our business manifest as a kit of parts. Our work centers on designing, building, optimizing and driving the automated fabrication, its equipment and processes.

This role is a contributor role with a path to grow, likely a great fit for someone with 4-6 years of experience. It is an opportunity to translate our technical vision and plans into reality, implement a novel building production system centered on modern production technologies and practices, all in an industry that has seen little innovation at all. While this role is an individual contributor today, we expect that after successfully laying the groundwork, you will over time grow a small team.

The day-to-day work will be focused on taking the different components of our “kit of parts” and making them “factory-ready.” This will require a high level of strategic coordination and cohesiveness with our various groups.

To specify, you will initially be interfacing with:

• design teams to link design to manufacturing.
• suppliers to create an executable strategy for logistics.
• machine suppliers to create an executable strategy for manufacturing equipment.
• on-site construction to create an executable strategy for storage and on-site erection.
• consultant teams to create an executable strategy for various technologies such as DE power, Shikkui plaster, radiant heating, modular MEP, etc
• the factory building design to lay out work spaces and equipment associated with manufacturing.

What You Will Achieve

Over the next year, we will go from concept to strategy to execution. For this role, the milestones are as follows:

• After 3 months you will have got up to speed on all facets of the kit of parts assemblies.
• After 6 months you will be implementing line orders for factory production and the layout of the factory.
• After 12 months kit of parts components will be designed into an active building project.

What We Expect

Given that this work is anchored in translating architectural products and designs into something we can produce in a factory at scale, being rooted in production engineering is essential; you very likely will have formal education and training in manufacturing/mechanical engineering with experience in automation. Direct experience with converting designs into manufacturing, or taking engineered products from concept to fabrication to use is highly valuable.

• A deep passion for the process of engineering, design and fabrication of physical objects.
• A desire to be part of and help create a tight knit team of dynamic professionals to bring complex concepts to life.
• A desire to change the architecture, engineering and construction industry in a fundamental way.

We are very excited to hear from you.

The community of the future is a place for everyone, and Sidewalk Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We encourage individuals from underrepresented groups to apply. All employment is based on merit and business needs.