Computational Design Customer Success

Job Description

Who are we?

Sidewalk Labs is an urban innovation company that tackles cities' greatest challenges. We create products and solutions, invest in new companies, and help developers build more sustainable, innovative, and equitable places around the world. Our ambitious vision requires us to push ourselves beyond conventional thinking, and we work hard in pursuit of our mission. Our cross-disciplinary team consists of experts from real estate, urban planning, government, finance, technology, and engineering, among other backgrounds.

Our urban innovations include Delve (a generative design product that empowers real estate teams to design better, faster, with less risk), Mesa (an easy-install kit for commercial buildings that cuts energy costs, improves tenant comfort, and simplifies building operations), Pebble (a low-cost vehicle sensor to help manage parking and curb space), and Affordable Electrification (a new way to manage home energy use to meet a customer’s monthly budget). We're also developing an offsite construction company that can deliver high-quality mass timber buildings for more sustainable living and working.

With the potential to radically improve quality of life in cities for all, our work is both exciting and complex. We are working to achieve something unprecedented — help us build it!

What is the role?

You will be a key member of Sidewalk’s Delve team, helping build an AI driven district planning product for development teams. Our team is committed to radically improving the quality of urban life. You will have a key customer-facing computational design role on the team, and will work directly with external users in development, design and planning firms to apply our tools to their problems and to drive their project-based decision-making. You will also work closely with product, design and engineering members of the team to share user needs and inform our core product.

• Apply Delve to solve customer needs, and configure the tool as needed for project requirements
• Manage projects from planning through coordination and into delivery
• Document work, analyze results and communicate and present insights to customer stakeholders and leadership
• Translate broad project briefs into optimization problems suitable for the product
• Provide domain expertise and knowledge in urban, design, planning and real estate development
• Help identify and scope more complex technical features for our product and engineering team, based on customer needs.
• Implement features and tools when needed to produce results for customers

Key aspects of the role include:

Customer mindset

Effective communication and great presentation skills is critical for this role. Maintain and build relationships with clients by prioritizing customer needs. Translation of client needs into computational scripts using Grasshopper/Python, and finding/researching creative solutions using the existing product and other plugins. An ability to identify where these scripts must become part of the core product and work closely with Product and Engineering to define and deliver them.

Core technical design

Creation of design documents for core pipeline development, with emphasis on clear communication of user story and the outline of a technical approach in response. Emphasis is on being able to lean on domain knowledge, user research and code prototypes, while collaborating successfully with software engineering to productionize features.

Computational design

Knowledge of and ability to create and apply parametric design models, BIM, GIS, domain-specific simulations (daylight/sunlight, transit, pedestrian behavior) and generative design processes.

Data analysis

Ability to parse, analyze, and recommend actions based on large spatial data sets in a machine learning setting.

Urban/Architectural design

Ability to understand, design and communicate comprehensive strategies for designing buildings, planning neighborhoods, with attention to factors such as building code, land-use, structure, building processes, and transit strategies.

This is a full-time position running with full benefits (paid time off, health insurance, 401k matching, etc.).

What You Will Achieve

Within the first month, you understand our product and tools in and out based on discussion with product, design and engineering. You can confidently customize and apply the tool to new sites and projects, and are fully onboarded into our version control and software development practices.

At the end of month three, you will have pushed our product forward with working prototypes and implemented features. You have added code to generate more sophisticated design options and evaluations that can meet the demands and constraints of real-world projects.

Beyond the first few months, you will have helped lead research efforts to identify at least one new technological opportunity for the product, in partnership with engineering, design and product management.

What we expect:

Expertise in computational and urban design

• You have 4+ years of experience in architecture, urban design and/or real estate development in: applying computational design methods, early- and mid-phase design, district-scale development and customer interaction.
• You have comfort working across design software (Rhino / Grasshopper) and GIS, and are familiar with code (Python / Pandas / GeoPandas). Most importantly, you know how to make technical solutions clear and useful for others.
• You have a degree in Urban Design, Architecture, Urban Planning or Computational Design, or have equivalent professional experience.

Action-oriented

• You love to dive into spatial design problems, and care about everything from critical details to the big-picture questions. You enjoy the challenge of iterative, evolving projects.
• Put the customer first! As a dedicated customer-facing computational designer, you’ll use our existing tools but must be willing and able to close the gaps when needed to satisfy customer project requirements.

Solve problems and communicate solutions, together

• You are a proven communicator; you know how to listen to customer needs and present solutions that improve end-user value (and don’t just make the biggest splash in the room).
• You know how to shift from presenting to key external stakeholders and internal leadership, to collaborating with colleagues in a working session.
• You know how to admit what you don’t know, and how to ask the right people on the team for help.
• You thrive working in complex environments with many internal and external stakeholders.

Passionate about cities

• Demonstrated curiosity for the urban environment and care deeply about improving the lives of people in cities.
• You live and breathe design and computation, but you believe that urban environments are the complex result of many other processes and disciplines.

Bonus points

• Experience with real estate development and finance
• Experience using statistics and data science to gain insight on design problems
• Experience with sales and business development
• Experience working on a digital product team in product design or user research roles
• Experience with human-centered design

Sidewalk Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We actively seek applicants from underrepresented communities. Even if you are not 100% sure you are right for the role, please apply and we will be happy to consider your application. All employment is based on merit and business need, and we respond to each application we receive.

We are very excited to hear from you.

Sidewalk Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We actively seek applicants from underrepresented communities. Even if you are not 100% sure you are right for the role, please apply and we will be happy to consider your application. All employment is based on merit and business need, and we respond to each application we receive.