Who are we?

Sidewalk Labs is an Alphabet company with a mission to radically improve urban life. We aim to create inclusive, large-scale communities by bringing together an innovative planning approach, products and services designed to address urban challenges, and capital for real estate and advanced infrastructure. 

Since our founding in 2015, we've grown into an organization of over 100 employees based primarily in New York and Toronto. Our cross-disciplinary team consists of experts from real estate, urban planning, government, finance, technology, and engineering, among other backgrounds.

To date, we've incubated and invested in multiple companies focused on solving city problems, and we've launched the Sidewalk Toronto project, which aims to create a community along Toronto's waterfront that achieves new standards of sustainability, affordability, and economic opportunity for all.

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?

You will be a key member of Sidewalk’s generative design team, helping build a product that solves complex problems in urban design, masterplanning, and real estate development. Our generative design team is committed to radically improving the quality of urban life through better digital design tools — and we’re bridging the urbanist-technologist divide by combining expertise in machine learning, optimization and cloud computation with a nuanced understanding of why and how the design of a city’s physical form matters.

You will be computational designer contributing to core product development on the team, and will collaborate closely with our engineering and design team to build new features and functionality that solves user needs.

• Build generative algorithms that create detailed and diverse design options for urban form
• Create functions that use simulation, geospatial data and geometry information to evaluate design options
• Research and test how best to apply computation — parametricism, machine learning and data-driven modeling — to urban design
• Collaborate with engineering team members to implement productionized features
• Collaborate with design team members to produce supporting documentation and visual assets for users
• Prototype quick solutions to user problems as needed
• Provide domain expertise and design knowledge in urban masterplanning, design and real estate development
  

This is a full time position. 

What you have to achieve:

• Within the first month, you know 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 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 3+ years of experience applying computational design methods to architecture, urban design, planning and/or real estate development.
• You have comfort working across and between all matter of GIS, design software (Rhino, Grasshopper) and code (Python) — and experience developing custom design tools and workflows.
• You have experience applying statistics, data science, machine learning, simulation or modeling to problems of design and the built environment.
• You have a degree in Urban Design, Architecture, Urban Planning, Computational Design, Computer Science or have equivalent professional experience.

Bias towards action

• 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.
• Be an advocate for design! As a computational designer on the team, you’ll need to identify critical areas for improvement, opportunities for new features in a broader market of software solutions, and build prototypes to prove your point.

Solve problems, together

• You are a proven collaborator and communicator; you know how to listen to and work well with experts from the same and other disciplines. 
• You can come up with novel solutions that solve for the problems of both urbanists and technologists.
• 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 breath design and computation, but you believe that urban environments are the complex result of many other processes and disciplines.
  

Bonus points

• Experience working on a digital product team in engineering roles
• Experience with agile software development

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 need.