Job Specifications
Software Engineer - Employee #1
The Company
Civic Star is building the data layer for real estate development—information that has never been digitized at scale. We give land developers, builders, and real estate professionals a 6-24 month head start on opportunities, before permits are filed and before the competition knows they exist.We've raised a pre-seed round with strong runway, signed up 500+ companies in our first 90 days of public beta, and we're growing quickly. We're creating an entirely new category: pre-entitlement intelligence. And we're looking for our first engineer to help us build it.
The Challenge
Every week, thousands of development projects move through city councils and planning commissions across America—rezoning requests, site plan approvals, preliminary plats. This is the earliest signal that construction is coming, but it's buried in tens of millions of PDFs, scattered across municipal websites, and nearly impossible to track at scale.We're digitizing this data layer for the first time. We scrape documents from thousands of jurisdictions, use AI to extract structured project data, and build tools that surface development opportunities months or years before they hit traditional databases.
The Opportunity
Incumbents platforms generate billions in annual revenue tracking upcoming real estate projects after construction begins. We're capturing projects at the entitlement stage, well before the first shovel goes in the ground and when they're most valuable as leads. As Employee #1, you'll have real ownership in a company positioned to define this category.
What You'll Be Solving
Scale and Reliability: Scraping thousands of municipal websites, each with different formats, rate limits, and quirks. Building systems that work consistently across unpredictable sources.Data
Extraction: Using LLMs to pull structured information—addresses, parcel numbers, approval decisions—from PDFs, Word docs, and scanned images. Doing this efficiently at thousands of documents per day.Data
Intelligence: Connecting the dots when a single project appears across multiple documents over 18 months. Deduplicating, merging, and enriching data into actionable insights.
Performance: Designing schemas and APIs that handle millions of projects, complex geospatial queries, and real-time updates.
Product: Building and maintaining a web platform with delightful features that can eventually support 1+ million active users.
AI-First Development
AI is core to how we build—not just for data extraction, but in our development workflow. We need someone who naturally reaches for AI tools, knows when to trust output and when to validate, and understands how to structure prompts and chain operations effectively.This isn't about replacing judgment—it's about amplifying it. If you're excited about using AI to move faster and solve problems impossible at our scale without it, we want to talk.
What We're Looking For
You get excited about hard problems at scale. You're comfortable with messy real-world data and building reliable systems from unpredictable inputs. You use AI as a force multiplier in your daily workflow.You genuinely enjoy startups—you recognize that being employee #1 means solving problems of all types, not just writing code. You're ready for ownership and impact.
The Stack
Symfony (PHP) backend, Next.js frontend, MySQL, LLMs for document processing. We care more about problem-solving ability than specific framework experience so don't be shy to apply if you're a fast learner.
Location
We're based in Pleasant Grove, Utah. This role is in-office and candidates from out of state would need to relocate.
Compensation
Competitive salary alongside meaningful equity.
What's Next
If you're interested in building the data infrastructure that digitizes upcoming real estate development for the first time, we'd love to hear from you.
About the Company
Philo is a Utah-based venture group, driving innovation and economic growth through its startup studio, venture fund, and real estate development team.
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