Terraform is automating on-site construction with robotics and software. Our mission is to make construction primarily software-defined and work towards a future where beautiful, bespoke buildings are built within a single day with minimal labor.
We're in the first days of building the company and we are recruiting for the early engineering team. This is a unique opportunity to be one of the first ten employees at a startup be immersed in a high-growth, high ambition startup environment, and to work with an experienced founding team surrounded by top-tier investors from day 1.
You can read a bit more on why we believe you should spend your time working on construction, learn more about our vision and about the company.
Working at Terraform
What we care about in a team member
We care the most about your speed and ability to learn as you go along. Even more so, given that progress in a hardware startup is slower than software due to its physical nature. It is about being aggressive and creative when dealing with problems. You don't over-optimize on efficiency, but you get the first version out the door to unblock critical issues.
You need to be a generalist who can own the design space from beginning to end. You're comfortable with framing, conceptualizing, coding & building to come up with the required solution for any situation.
You're comfortable taking technology bets without doing endless research while actively derisking those bets by building. It means that we try to get to the trickiest part as soon as possible for each engineering decision. In this way, we decide if it's worth investing more time in that direction or killing it asap.
You are a pragmatic first-principle thinker. For each element in the robotic system, you can articulate why it's a necessity and why we can't pick cheaper components or simplify the design for our use case. If so, we should stick with what everyone else is doing. If not, you should have the conviction to go for the simpler design and the cheaper components.
You get your hands dirty & get things done. We are a small team, and no matter how senior you are, we expect you to be involved (and enjoy) in building the prototypes for all initial hardware. You should know when to take the right shortcuts to ship something that works.
You will enjoy this if you
Enjoy taking technical products from zero to one. You're a natural hacker who learns from building and testing rather than by developing perfect theory. You find fast and pragmatic ways to get things to work. You feel an intrinsic motivation for solving problems that have never been solved before.
Are passionate about bringing physical products to life that integrate hardware and software in systems for real-world problems. You love solving complex engineering problems from scratch and push through till you see the solution work.
Like working in a startup environment navigating uncertainty and complexity. You worked in high-pressure environments that before that launched the first version of the product.
Believe in the big mission that affordable and beautiful housing is needed to make this world a better place. You believe that great teams make magic happen, while you can solve tricky things yourself.
You are driven, organized, and communicative and you thrive in environments with high ambiguity.
We don't hang out on beanbags and play foosball on Friday afternoons and if that's what you're looking for, Terraform might not be for you. We do offer you a challenging job with a strong mission, a talented team to learn from and an opportunity to build something that has never been successfully built before.
Our engineering stack and culture today
We fully own our entire stack, from the code we prototype on a microcontroller to final assembly and control of our robots. This vertical integration gives us maximum control to solve the specific problems we need to solve, and instead of making things harder, it allows us to solve each problem at the exact layer where it’s most appropriate.
We bring the mindset of a software startup to hardware and robotics. We prototype rapidly, prioritize the most difficult parts first so that we can derisk them quickly and try to ship improvements of both software and hardware on a weekly basis.
Most of our control software is written in Rust. We believe Rust provides us with a great balance between high level abstractions and efficient low level control and is an ideal language for modern robotics. Rust easily targets multiple platforms, and we use it to both interface with our hardware and drive high level motion planning and simulations
Our 3D sim and digital twin runs in the browser, is written in TypeScript. We use Three.js and a WebAssembly OpenCascade kernel. We compile Rust code from the backend (e.g. for path planning) to WebAssembly and run it in the browser for simulations.
That being said, we try to be pragmatic above all and care more about the product outcomes than engineering for its own sake. So we also use Python for machine learning and perception or embedded C for specific microcontrollers whenever that makes the most sense.
What we offer
A leading role as an early engineer that fundamentally shapes our product and technology. You’re not going to be working for months optimizing some tiny component of a large system–we’re still at a stage where everyone is effectively a systems and design engineer for the entire system.
The ability to get involved in a hardware startup building physical products if you’re coming straight from a software-only environment.
Help grow and nurture the team and company for the long term.
Competitive, market-rate salary.
Generous equity package.
Office based in the city-center of Amsterdam.
In short, we'll make sure all the essentials are in place for you to do your best work.
FAQ
Who's in the team today?
How can I get in touch?
Send us a message at iwanttojoin@terraform.ai
Where are you based?
In the city center of Amsterdam at the Overtoom, on the ground floor of a beautiful old school building.
Are you doing remote work?
No. We all like to work physically together from the office and we believe it's a necessity given the hardware work we're doing. That being said, we're comfortable with the occasional working-from-home days and this is of course conditional on covid government policy.
Will you relocate me? Can you sponsor my visa?
Yes, we can sponsor visa’s and can help you relocate to Amsterdam.
Are you funded?
Yes, we're well-funded by top-tier investors. We're not disclosing details publicly but can share more information during the interview process.
How big is the company? How many people will you hire?
We're 6 people right now. We're planning to grow to about 12-14 people by the end of 2022.
I don't know anything about construction or robotics, is this for me?
Yes, absolutely. We're looking for people that are smart and willing to learn new things quickly. If you're a great engineer and excited about construction and robotics, this could be the best environment for to dive deep into those topics while approaching them with a fresh perspective.
View our open positions
Interested? Get in touch with us: iwanttojoin@terraform.ai, and tell us a bit about the most interesting or difficult project you’ve worked on to date.
If you don’t meet all the qualifications here but are excited about Terraform and feel you’d still be able to help us solve difficult problems, do get in touch. We are open to generalists with a demonstrated ability to focus on outcomes and get things done and are comfortable with you learning things as you go along.