Computational Designer

Reinvent how housing gets designed, permitted, and built in America.

Cedar is building the operating system for urban housing delivery. We combine architectural expertise with software, automation, and data systems to dramatically accelerate how projects move from land acquisition to approved designs and construction. The result: faster timelines, higher quality, lower risk, and more housing in the cities that need it most.

Our team blends architects, engineers, and product builders. We design real buildings — and we build the software systems that make great architecture scalable.

The Role

This role sits within Cedar’s architecture team and partners closely with product and engineering to scale how feasibility work is done. You’ll work hands-on with project designers to produce early-stage 3D design studies, while also helping define the workflows, tools, and feedback loops that turn feasibility into a repeatable, high-quality system.

This is a hybrid design + systems role: part practitioner, part process-builder. You’ll help translate real project needs into better internal tooling and workflows that improve speed, quality, and consistency across Cedar’s feasibility work.

What You’ll Do

• Partner with project designers during feasibility to generate 3D design studies and early massing options for real development sites.

• Help define and standardize feasibility workflows so outcomes are repeatable, accurate, and scalable across projects and markets.

• Evaluate how feasibility work is produced today, identify bottlenecks and quality gaps, and propose improvements to process and tooling.

• Bridge between the architecture team and Cedar’s software engineers by providing structured feedback on tools, workflows, and data needs.

• Contribute to the evolution of Cedar’s internal design systems as they expand into later phases of design and delivery.

Who You Are

• You care about the real-world impact of design, especially housing, cities, and placemaking.

• You’re excited by the idea of turning good design work into scalable systems, not just one-off solutions.

• You enjoy collaborating across disciplines and can communicate clearly with both designers and engineers.

• You think in workflows and systems, not just individual deliverables.

• You’re curious, adaptable, and comfortable operating in an early-stage, fast-evolving environment.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in computational or parametric design within an architecture or design practice.

• Strong proficiency with tools like Rhino + Grasshopper (or similar parametric design environments).

• Experience translating design intent into repeatable workflows or toolchains is a plus.

• Comfortable working on ambiguous, early-stage problems where process is still being defined.

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive salary

• Meaningful equity ownership

• Healthcare, dental, and vision

• Early-stage ownership and the opportunity to shape how design is scaled inside Cedar