---
title: 'Sales Engineer (EPC and Owner/Operator) - Houston at Candid Intelligence'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sales-engineer-epc-and-owner-operator-houston-candid-intelligence-houston-7w9vz9sxt5nm'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-12'
---

# Sales Engineer (EPC and Owner/Operator) - Houston at Candid Intelligence

- **Company:** Candid Intelligence
- **Location:** Houston, TX
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-01-23
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/candidintelligence/56d3e5d7-60bd-41ca-a15b-e98cf6d64b7d

## Job description

## What We’re Building

Candid is building the AI layer for EPCs and owner operators. We use AI to reduce the manual effort behind preconstruction engineering by automating document understanding, consistency checks, and repetitive workflow steps across major disciplines. The goal is to make preconstruction 10x faster without sacrificing engineering quality. We recently raised $6.5M from top AI and industrial investors (including Schneider Electric and Meta’s Chief AI Scientist). Our team includes engineers from MIT, Carnegie Mellon, major LNG and power projects, and leading EPCs.

## What You Will Do

You are the tip of the spear in Houston. Your job is to get us into the right rooms and close deals. You will own early revenue in the EPC and owner operator space, with a strong bias toward smaller, faster moving firms. Core responsibilities

- Build and own a Houston based pipeline of EPCs, PMCs, and owner operators
- Drive new meetings weekly through outbound, warm intros, events, and local networking
- Run discovery calls and qualify deals fast (use case, urgency, buying process, champion, budget)
- Deliver product demos that feel credible to engineers and leadership
- Translate real workflows into a clear value story and ROI that customers actually believe
- Scope pilots and proofs of value with clear success criteria, deliverables, timeline, and next step to production
- Coordinate technical deep dives with our team when needed and keep momentum high
- Handle common objections (security, data access, accuracy, “we already have a process,” “AI risk”)
- Support RFPs, security questionnaires, procurement steps, and contracting workflows
- Keep CRM clean and run a tight sales process from first meeting to signature

You will work closely with the founders and product team. You will shape our positioning and playbook in the market because you will hear the real objections and real motivations first.

## What We Are Looking For

- 5+ years selling into EPCs, industrial services firms, or owner operators (engineering software or technical solutions)
- Deep understanding of how EPC preconstruction works (FEL, FEED, early detailed design) and how decisions get made
- You can speak engineer and exec and you know when to go deep vs when to zoom out
- Strong Houston network and the ability to keep building it (events, lunches, coffees, conferences)
- Proven ability to source meetings and close deals, not just “manage accounts”
- Comfort selling something new where the category is still forming
- Strong writing and follow up skills, you keep momentum without being annoying
- High pace. You like being on the ground, in person, and moving fast

Preference

- Experience working with smaller EPCs or regional owner operators and building relationships there
- You are biased toward companies that move fast and don’t take 12 months to buy

## Nice to Have

- Prior role as a sales engineer, solutions engineer, or technical BD in industrial software
- Experience selling workflows related to engineering documents (PFDs, P&IDs, datasheets, vendor packages, line lists, specs)
- Familiarity with typical enterprise procurement and security reviews
- Existing relationships with project directors, discipline leads, engineering managers, or digital teams in Houston

## Compensation and Perks

- Base + meaningful equity + commission
- Commission tied directly to closed revenue (simple and transparent)
- Unlimited PTO
- Insurance with medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Health and wellness budget up to $150 per month

## About Candid Intelligence

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Candid Intelligence builds AI-driven software to compress pre-construction timelines for large energy and industrial infrastructure projects, helping owner-operators and EPCs reach Final Investment Decision (FID) faster.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Talha Faiz (Co-Founder & CEO) and Hassan Azmat (Co-Founder)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Construction (energy infrastructure, data centers, process plants, nuclear facilities)
- **Target customers**: B2B Enterprise – owner-operators (e.g., Shell, SABIC, Meta) and EPCs (e.g., Worley, Burns & McDonnell, McDermott)
- **Mission**: Collapse pre-construction timelines and free engineers to build the infrastructure the world actually needs.

## Products & Services
- **Candid AI Platform**: An AI-assisted system that ingests engineering drawings (P&IDs, isometrics, plot plans), builds knowledge graphs, orchestrates multi-agent workflows, and enables real-time document reconciliation. Designed to compress FEED (Front-End Engineering Design) from months to days and improve cost certainty from ±30% to ±20% [candidintelligence.com](https://www.candidintelligence.com/).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised – $6.5M (Seed round, as of 2025) [candidintelligence.com](https://www.candidintelligence.com/join)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: E14 Fund (MIT’s venture fund), Liquid 2 Ventures, Flexcap Ventures, and angel investors including Yann LeCun and Carnegie Mellon alumni [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/candid-intelligence) [candidintelligence.com](https://www.candidintelligence.com/join)
- **Growth Signals**: POCs with leading EPCs; clear success metrics to beat “pilot purgatory”; backed by investors of OpenAI and xAI; team intentionally capped at 10 people until $100M revenue [candidintelligence.com](https://www.candidintelligence.com/join)

## Competitive Advantages
- **On-premise deployment**: All models and data stay within customer infrastructure, ensuring control and compliance for mission-critical projects.
- **Human-led AI**: The platform assists but does not replace engineers; every output is reviewable, editable, and requires human approval.
- **Institutional knowledge capture**: Senior engineer judgment and assumptions are preserved and made reusable across projects.
- **Proven domain focus**: Built by engineers with backgrounds in aerospace, finance, and national-scale systems, tailored specifically to energy infrastructure pre-construction.

## Strategic Focus
- **Collapse pre-construction timelines**: Reduce the typical 2-year pre-construction phase to weeks, enabling earlier FID and faster project delivery.
- **Expand into adjacent verticals**: Data centers, nuclear facilities, and other large-scale capital projects that share similar engineering workflows.
- **Maintain lean team**: Aim to keep headcount under 10 until reaching $100M in revenue, relying on automation and 10× builders.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Partners, not employees” – self-directed, self-managed, and shared control over strategy. No managers, only builders.
- **Remote-first**: Default remote, with plans for an in-person hub in Houston to stay close to customers. Meetings only when vital.
- **Compensation**: High and equal base pay with profit-sharing for all partners. Success is shared directly.
- **Engineering focus**: Small team of top-tier builders; every partner is a full-stack builder with deep expertise in AI, infrastructure, or energy engineering.
- **Impact**: Work on problems that directly affect the $2T energy infrastructure industry – only 1 in 200 projects finish on time and budget.

## Sources
1. [candidintelligence.com](https://www.candidintelligence.com/)
2. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/candid-intelligence)
3. [candidintelligence.com/join](https://www.candidintelligence.com/join)
4. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/candid-intelligence)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/candidintelligence)

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