Software / ML Engineer (leadership)

About Framework

Framework is building fully automated apparel manufacturing facilities in the United States. Using software and robotics, we aim to match then beat Asian production costs while slashing lead‑times and inventory holding costs for apparel brands.

Once‑in‑a‑career build — we’re designing the first truly software‑defined apparel factory in the United States. Expect green‑field ownership, a factory floor as your living lab, and permission to invent new patterns.

Long‑run stability without big‑co bureaucracy — Backed by tier 1 investors, we’re funded with years of runway and have brand partners lined up.

Why Build it Now? It all comes down to Cost Physics, which we wrote about here. The four forces of manufacturing—raw materials, energy, CapEx, and labor—have hit a once in a generation crossover point:

• Machine intelligence + dexterity has collapsed labor to <10% of a garment’s cost at scale
• America has abundant cotton and energy, we’re the largest exporter of cotton on earth with the lowest average industrial energy cost in the world
• Supply‑chain risk and inventory waste have inverted the Asian production advantages: months‑long lead‑times and tariff exposure are now more expensive than automated local production

Put together, these shifts create a window to do what was “impossible” for the last 50 years—manufacture apparel in the U.S. and win on cost. We’re seizing that window; if this sounds like your kind of once‑in‑a‑generation build, let’s talk.

The Opportunity

Contribute to the digital nervous system of the factory: a cloud‑native ERP & MES, a customer‑facing Brand Portal, and the data pipelines that power real‑time dashboards and forecasting. You will work shoulder‑to‑shoulder with mechanical and robotics engineers on the factory floor, turning machine signals and ERP events into software that moves needles.

In Your First 12 Months You Will

• Stand up v1 of our ERP/MES ingesting machine telemetry and shop‑floor events in near‑real‑time, and automate planning, scheduling, and material tracking
• Ship the Brand Portal so customers can upload styles, view buffer stock, trigger replenishment, and monitor/track orders
• Instrument the factory and expose REST APIs that unify MES, ERP, WMS, IMS, and PLM data.
• Influence the architecture & culture—build and maintain code repos, choose libraries, conventions, and coding standards that future teammates will inherit.

Who You Are

• 5+ years shipping production software across both backend and frontend.
• Mastery of Python or JavaScript.
• Strong understanding of modern frontend architecture, component-based development, and best practices.
• Pragmatic about architecture; you design for simplicity today with an eye toward resilience tomorrow.
• Understanding of database design and querying with PostgreSQL
• Bias for action, extreme ownership, first principles thinking, and truth‑seeking

Nice‑to‑Haves

• Experience with manufacturing, supply‑chain, ERP/MES/WMS systems, edge computing, or industrial IoT.
• Familiarity with Figma
• Exposure to demand forecasting, optimization, or ML.

Why Framework

• Mission with impact. Reshore manufacturing, shrink supply chains, and change how apparel is made.
• True ownership. You report directly to the founder, steer the technical roadmap, and shape the culture.
• Tangible output. See your code move robots and create apparel in minutes.