PhD Researcher (Machine Learning for Construction)

Location: Boston, MA, USA; the 12-week 2027 U.S. research internship supports office, remote, and hybrid work based on business and team needs. In-person onboarding or identity verification may be required.

Annualized PhD intern base salary: $118,560–$162,240.

Company

hirify.global develops software that helps professionals design and create buildings, infrastructure, manufactured products, and media.

What you will do

• Define and investigate an open machine learning or AI research question for architecture, engineering, and construction data.
• Design and train graph-based and temporal models on large, heterogeneous real-world project data.
• Build predictive models with reliable uncertainty estimates and evaluate them against strong baselines.
• Prepare, integrate, validate, and represent data from multiple sources, including knowledge graphs.
• 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 data, temporal graph models, or time-series forecasting.
• Experience with uncertainty-aware prediction, calibrated probability estimates, and small or imbalanced labeled datasets.
• Rigorous experimental practice, including baselines, ablations, leakage-safe splits, and label-quality checks.
• Proficiency in Python, PyTorch, and graph query languages; clear communication with technical and non-technical audiences.

Nice to have

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

Culture & Benefits

• Paid 12-week research internship running from February 1 through April 30, 2027.
• Collaboration with hirify.global researchers and industry domain experts.
• Flexible Workplace approach supporting office, remote, and hybrid arrangements according to business and team needs.
• Access to tech talks and development opportunities.
• Work as an individual contributor within a research team.