Optimization Research Intern

Who we are:

Aro Homes is a thriving, purpose-driven company on a mission to redefine residential construction. Aro Homes was founded to create well designed, precision engineered homes that are beautiful, livable, and durable, while being built multiple times faster and having a positive impact on the environment.

We are a diverse and experienced group of passionate and curious designers, builders, engineers, product developers, and businesspeople who are passionate about and committed to delivering on our mission. We’ve demonstrated there is a massive opportunity to reduce waste and improve sustainability while building homes in a fraction of the time it takes traditionally. We utilize a repeatable, multi-disciplinary, and product-driven approach which is unique in the industry. We are funded by world-class investors who care about transforming industries for the better, including Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors. If you share the desire to leave a lasting positive impact on the world and to join a strong culture of intelligent, passionate people, then let’s start a conversation.  

What you will be responsible for:

We are seeking a graduate-level researcher (MS or PhD candidate) with interests in computational methods, data analysis, and real estate markets to join our engineering team for Summer 2025. This position offers access to a unique, comprehensive real estate dataset encompassing millions of parcels across multiple California counties, presenting an exceptional opportunity to work on challenging problems at the intersection of large-scale optimization and residential property market analysis with real-world impact. 

The Research Challenge 

The core challenge combines residential real estate market analysis with computational optimization of modular home designs across a high-dimensional parameter space. Specifically: 

• Working with a complex combinatorial space of home design parameters (dimensions, module configurations) 

• Developing efficient algorithms to evaluate design fitness across 4.5 million parcels 

• Creating novel approaches to evaluate property valuation based on historical comparable sales data 

• Optimizing computationally intensive operations that currently require scanning millions of records 

The computational complexity is substantial: each home design (~20,000 permutations with 30 variables) must be evaluated across 4.5 million parcels, with each evaluation requiring analysis of ~1 million historical property records. This creates a search space of approximately 100 trillion evaluations, presenting an exceptionally challenging optimization problem. 

Duties and Responsibilities:

1. Data Validation and Enhancement:  

• Review existing datasets for completeness and consistency 

• Collaborate with the data team to identify and address data gaps 

• Recommend and implement data structure improvements to support optimization goals 

1. Algorithm Development and Implementation:  

• Design and implement novel optimization approaches in Python 

• Create efficient algorithms for evaluating design fitness across large datasets 

• Develop methods to prune the search space without sacrificing solution quality 

• Implement parallelization and distribution strategies to manage computational complexity 

Qualifications and Skills:

Required: 

• Current enrollment in a Masters or PhD program in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Economics, Real Estate, Urban Planning, or related field 

• Strong programming skills in Python 

• Experience with SQL and relational databases (Postgres preferred) 

Preferred: 

• Experience with residential real estate market analysis or property valuation methods 

• Background in optimization algorithms, computational complexity, or data structures 

• Knowledge of spatial data analysis or geographic information systems 

• Experience with AWS serverless architecture 

• Background in real estate analytics, land development, or production homebuilding 

• Familiarity with statistical methods for property valuation or market analysis 

• Ability to work in-office at least 2 days per week in Mountain View, CA 

What We Offer 

• Opportunity to work with a unique, comprehensive real estate dataset unavailable elsewhere 

• Potential to extend the internship to support ongoing academic research 

• Direct mentorship from the Engineering Director 

• Practical application of advanced optimization research in a commercial setting 

• Competitive compensation 

At Aro Homes, we are focused on building a diverse and inclusive workforce. We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation to fill out an application, please do not hesitate to let us know at people@aro.homes. If you’re excited about this role, but do not meet 100% of the qualifications listed above, we encourage you to apply. 

Salary : $40 - $50