Sr. Staff Researcher

Open Position

Sr. Staff Researcher

Remote / Hybrid (Portland, OR HQ)
Competitive Salary plus Equity
Full-time
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If the Apply Now button doesn't work please email us at careers@propheticsoftware.ai with the position you're applying for in the subject line. Include your CV, LinkedIn, and portfolio. We look forward to meeting you!

About Prophetic

Real estate development is a multi-billion-dollar industry that has run on fragmented data, manual processes, and gut instinct for decades. Prophetic is changing that. We're building the AI-native platform that enables homebuilders, developers, and investors to find, analyze, and act on land opportunities from a single system — powered by proprietary technologies that process billions of data points across all 50 states. We are the market leader in our space, and our customers don't just use the product — they love it. We're not making teams more efficient. We're changing how they operate.

Prophetic is scaling fast — demand is outpacing our ability to hire, and we're just getting started. This is a once-in-a-lifetime team: sharp, low ego, deeply collaborative, and obsessed with building the best product in the industry. Come disrupt an industry with us.

About the Role

We’re looking for a Sr. Staff Researcher to serve as an in-house real estate domain expert. This role sits at the intersection of data quality, product research, and land development expertise. You’ll be the person our engineering and product teams turn to when they need to understand how real estate data works in the real world — from zoning codes to ownership records to municipal planning documents. You won’t be writing code, but you’ll be shaping the intelligence behind our products every day.

This is not a traditional research role. You’ll be hands-on, working directly with our platform to validate data accuracy, identify gaps, evaluate new data sources, and ensure that what we deliver to customers reflects ground truth. Your real estate expertise will be the lens through which we refine and improve our AI-driven tools.

Prophetic’s platform processes geospatial data, zoning information, parcel ownership records, and AI-generated insights across all 50 states. Data accuracy is everything in this industry — our customers make million-dollar land acquisition decisions based on what we show them. You’ll be the person who ensures we get it right.

This is a high-visibility, high-impact role. You’ll work directly with leadership, engineering, and customers to ensure Prophetic’s data and products reflect real-world ground truth.

What You'll Do

  • Serve as the in-house domain expert on land acquisition, zoning, entitlements, and real estate development workflows.
  • Validate and QA platform data against authoritative public sources, including county assessor records, GIS portals, and municipal planning documents.
  • Research and evaluate new data sources to expand and improve the platform’s coverage and accuracy.
  • Collaborate with engineering and product teams to translate real-world real estate concepts into product requirements and data logic.
  • Support customer-facing efforts by providing domain expertise during demos, onboarding, and strategic conversations.
  • Investigate data discrepancies and edge cases, documenting findings and recommending solutions.
  • Monitor regulatory and market changes that affect the data landscape and advise the team on implications.
  • Contribute to internal knowledge bases and research documentation to scale domain expertise across the organization.
  • Leverage AI tooling daily for research, data validation, and documentation.

What You Need

  • 3+ years of experience in land acquisition, site selection, land planning, or a closely related real estate development function.
  • Deep working knowledge of zoning regulations, entitlement processes, parcel data, and ownership records.
  • Experience navigating county assessor websites, GIS systems, and municipal record portals to source and verify data.
  • Strong research skills with the ability to synthesize large volumes of public records and unstructured data into clear, actionable insights.
  • Excellent attention to detail and a quality-first mindset — you notice when something doesn’t look right.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills — ability to explain complex real estate concepts to technical teammates.
  • Self-starter who thrives in ambiguity and can manage multiple research priorities simultaneously.
  • Comfort with AI tooling as part of your daily workflow.

Nice to Have

  • Experience with residential land development, homebuilder operations, or commercial real estate due diligence.
  • Familiarity with feasibility analysis, impact fees, or development pro formas.
  • Background in data quality, data governance, or research operations.
  • Experience working at a proptech or real estate technology company.
  • Degree in finance, real estate, urban planning, or a related field.

Why Prophetic

  • The team. Wide expertise, sharp, low ego, and genuinely fun to work with. We have each other's backs and we celebrate wins together.
  • Real ownership and impact from day one. Our customers make million-dollar decisions on our platform. Your work matters immediately.
  • AI-native product and AI-native workflows. Every team — engineering, sales, operations — runs on AI tooling daily.
  • Founder-led transparency. Leadership shares the financials, the strategy, and the hard calls with the whole team.
  • High growth, high demand. The product works, customers love it, and we are hiring to keep up. No shortage of opportunity here.
  • Flexibility. Remote, hybrid, or in-office with a great Portland, OR headquarters.
  • Self-starters who thrive in ambiguity. We're a startup. If you need someone to tell you what to do every morning, this isn't the place; if you come alive solving hard problems with smart people, it is.

Benefits (US-based Full-time Employees)

  • 100% medical, dental & vision insurance coverage for you; 30% coverage for dependents
  • Competitive salary and meaningful early-stage equity
  • Unlimited PTO
  • Remote / hybrid
  • Office equipment stipend
  • In-office perks: snacks, drinks, coffee, ping-pong table, and more — plus cuddles from Olive, our in-office Doberman
  • Budget for intra-office travel
  • 2–3 annual team meetups in person
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How We Work

These four themes are how we think, build, and lead.

  • Truth — Say the hard thing. We speak plainly, flag problems early, and share what's actually going on.
  • Precision — Sign your name to it. Our customers make million-dollar decisions on our data. We get the details right.
  • Velocity — Speed compounds. Waiting doesn't. We ship daily and launch features every two to three weeks.
  • Ownership — Own it, then solve it. We own outcomes, not tasks. If something's broken, we fix it.

Prophetic is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.

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