PhD Researcher, Machine Learning for Construction

Location: Boston, MA, USA; the 12-week U.S. research internship supports office, remote, or hybrid work based on business and team needs.

Salary: $118,560–$162,240 annualized base salary for PhD students.

Company

hirify.global develops software that helps innovators design and make buildings, products, infrastructure, and other creative works.

What you will do

• Define and investigate an open research question in machine learning and AI for architecture, engineering, and construction data.
• Design and train graph-based, temporal, and other AI models on large, heterogeneous project datasets.
• Build predictive models with calibrated uncertainty estimates and evaluate them against strong baselines.
• Prepare, integrate, and validate data from multiple sources, including knowledge graph representations.
• Document methods and results, present findings, and potentially contribute to research publications.

Requirements

• Currently pursuing a PhD in computer science, machine learning, data science, civil engineering, construction informatics, or a related field, with graduation no sooner than April 2027.
• Research experience with heterogeneous knowledge graphs, graph neural networks, graph transformers, link prediction, node classification, and graph self-supervised learning.
• Experience with temporal or time-varying data, uncertainty-aware prediction, calibrated probabilities, and small or imbalanced labeled datasets.
• Strong experimental practice, including baselines, ablations, leakage-safe train/test splits, and label quality checks.
• Proficiency in Python, PyTorch, and graph query languages.
• Ability to explain technical results clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.

Nice to have

• Time-series, state-space, multimodal, Bayesian, or probabilistic modeling experience.
• Natural language processing or large language model experience for technical and AEC data.
• Experience with AEC data or workflows, including building models, drawings, schedules, project records, or design reviews.
• Knowledge graph engineering with Neo4j, Cypher, ontologies, entity linking, and data integration.
• Publications in leading machine learning or construction computing venues.

Culture & Benefits

• Paid 12-week research internship running from February 1 through April 30, 2027.
• Work with researchers and industry domain experts on AI for AEC workflows.
• Access to tech talks and development opportunities.
• Flexible Workplace support for office, remote, and hybrid arrangements based on business and team needs.
• Inclusive workplace focused on belonging and equal employment opportunity.