Structural Engineer - Building Systems / DFMA

What You'll Do

• Own the structural system for our platform
• Define standard structural assemblies for walls, floors, roofs, stairs, and connections that balance strength, stiffness, cost, and manufacturability.
• Set design rules, load paths, typical details, and tolerances that can be reused across products and projects.
• Bridge design, modeling, and manufacturing
• Partner with architects and modelers to translate architectural intent into structurally rational, factory-buildable systems.
• Work with our Onshape Modeling / FeatureScript teams so structural rules are encoded in models, automation, and shop documentation (not just in isolated details).
• Lead structural engineering on key projects
• Develop internal structural schemes and calculations for priority projects before they go to the Engineer of Record.
• Prepare clear, well-structured packages for external structural engineers and third-party inspectors, and drive efficient review cycles.
• Tighten the loop between design, factory, and field
• Diagnose structural root causes behind issues like cracking, misfits, or tolerance clashes in factory and field.
• Turn lessons learned from the floor and jobsite into updated details, standards, and rules that prevent recurrence.
• Manage and level-up external partners
• Coordinate with EORs and other consultants to align on performance criteria, details, and assumptions.
• Push for designs that are safe and code-compliant without unnecessary over-design, and quantify trade-offs in cost and manufacturability.
• Contribute to platform-level system studies
• Co-lead investigations into new structural concepts and their implications for cost, throughput, carbon, and field performance.
• Work with systems and MEP engineering to rationalize penetrations, chases, and integrated assemblies.
• Prototype automated structural optimization workflows
• Work with modeling and software teams to design simple, repeatable optimization studies for key framing systems (for example: minimizing steel tonnage subject to drift limits, or comparing lateral systems across cost and constructability).
• Help define how structural models, analysis tools, and modeling pipeline should interact so these studies can eventually be run automatically for both platforms and projects.

Outcomes

By your 90-day mark, we’ll look to you to have driven tangible, system-level progress. Specifically, you will:

• Establish a baseline structural “kit of parts”
• Document standard wall, floor, and roof assemblies (including spans, sheathing patterns, shear wall strategy, tie-downs, and typical connections) for a selected product line (e.g., Triple Decker or comparable module set).
• Identify where current details are over-designed, under-specified, or misaligned with factory reality, and propose targeted updates.
• Close at least two recurring structural pain loops between design and factory
• Partner with factory, modeling, and design teams to select two recurring issues with structural implications (for example: cracking during lifts, truss dimension mismatches, missing shear/nailing schedules, or wall fit problems).
• For each, deliver:
• A concise root-cause write-up, including structural and process contributors.
• A concrete change to details, standards, or tolerances that is implemented in our drawings, models, or Sidekick documentation.
• Define a repeatable collaboration model with our structural EOR
• For at least one active project, lead the structural engagement with the EOR from internal concept through stamped package.
• Produce a lightweight “playbook” for how we want to work with stamping engineers going forward (what we own, what they own, how we avoid unnecessary over-design, and how we keep decisions synchronized with our models).
• Embed structural logic in our digital toolchain
• Work with modeling and software partners to get at least one important structural rule (for example: standard nailing schedule behavior, span checks, or connection rules) expressed in a way that can be encoded in our parametric modeling workflows.
• Document the next 3-5 candidate rules that should follow, with a clear sense of impact and implementation difficulty.
• Create a shared, practical definition of “structurally done”
• Align with architecture, modeling, and factory engineering on what “structurally done” means at each stage (concept, permit, issued-for-modeling, issued-for-factory, issued-for-field).
• Propose a simple checklist or gate for at least one stage that we begin piloting on live work.

Qualifications

• Experience
• 7+ years of structural engineering experience on building projects, ideally including multifamily or high-repeatability housing types.
• Experience with modular, offsite, panelized, or other prefabricated systems is a strong plus.
• Demonstrated track record of coordinating with architects, MEP engineers, fabricators, and field teams.
• Technical depth
• Strong grasp of structural behavior in wood/light-gauge and mixed-material systems (gravity, lateral, connections, deflection, movement, and creep).

Additional information

Solid understanding of current building codes and standards, including IBC, ASCE 7, and relevant material-specific codes.

• Familiarity with Massachusetts and/or California building codes, and comfort working with third-party modular inspection agencies and local AHJs.
• Proficiency with structural analysis and documentation tools; comfortable working from and back into Revit, and able to collaborate effectively with parametric CAD environments (Onshape, SolidWorks, Tekla, etc.).
• Experience with or strong interest in API-driven structural tools (for example SkyCiv, Dlubal RFEM 6, or similar), or a track record of using scripting/automation around more traditional tools (e.g., RISA, ETABS, SAP) to run repeatable studies and optimizations.
• Systems mindset
• Excited to turn one-off project details into reusable patterns and rules.
• Able to weigh cost, manufacturability, throughput, and embodied carbon alongside pure structural performance.
• Collaboration and communication
• Clear communicator who can explain structural trade-offs to architects, modelers, factory leaders, and executives.
• Comfortable engaging directly with trades and factory operators to understand what actually happens on the floor and in the field.
• Bias to action
• Inclined to test ideas quickly on real problems, including prototypes, then codify what works.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity and helping define processes, not just following them.

If you’re excited by the idea of owning the structural backbone of a new kind of housing platform, and you want to see your work move from model to robot to home in weeks, not years, we’d love to talk.