Construction Robot Operator
About the job
- A technical and analytical mindset, including the ability to distinguish between hardware and software failures and debug problems when something breaks.
- Comfort working hands-on outdoors and waking early to drive to construction sites on time.
- An outcome- and detail-oriented approach, including maintaining clean, high-quality construction results.
- A driver's license and comfort driving a van.
- Fluency in spoken and written English.
- Applicants must be based in the United Kingdom, eligible to work there, and able to commute onsite to London.
- Ability to work five days per week as a contractor or sole trader.
- Prepare real or test construction projects by understanding what needs to be built, where it needs to be built, and the site conditions.
- Prepare construction sites by placing markers and taking photographs for 3D reconstruction.
- Operate construction robots using the in-house software system on a laptop.
- Take notes while the system runs so the research and development team can improve the product.
- Troubleshoot issues with engineering, operations, and manufacturing teams in Amsterdam.
- Perform site tasks including setting wall ties, cutting and loading bricks, and pointing walls.
- Represent Monumental as its ambassador and on-site point of contact.
- Travel to construction sites across the country from the UK hub and work at the hub to build test walls, learn to service and maintain robots, and prepare for deployments.
- Previous experience on a construction site.
About the company
Monumental builds autonomous, electric ground robots for construction sites to perform bricklaying and related masonry tasks. The robots navigate rough terrain with sensors and computer vision, lift bricks with a small crane, and lay them with mortar, all coordinated by the Atrium AI software. They operate under a bricklaying-as-a-service model, allowing contractors to hire Monumental as a subcontractor instead of buying or maintaining equipment. The goal is to scale robot deployments across Europe, expand the range of masonry tasks the robots can handle, and help reduce labor shortages and costs in construction.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Series B
Total Funding
$57M
Headquarters
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Founded
2021
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- July 2026 funding extends runway for Europe, UK, and planned US launches.
- More than 100 homes, plus schools and canal walls, validate real customer demand.
- UK bricklayer shortages and 2026 US labor gaps directly support pricing power.
What critics are saying
- A site-level failure or injury on a UK jobsite can halt deployments quickly.
- Construction fragmentation means missing bricks, permits, or subcontractor delays still stop revenue.
- If US pilots slip in 2026, Khosla-backed expansion loses its main scaling narrative.
What makes Monumental unique
- 2026 Series B with Khosla backs Monumental’s subcontractor model, not robot sales.
- Atrium coordinates brick, mortar, scanning, and planning across over 150 deployed robots.
- Founded by Silk veterans in 2021, it brings Palantir-style forward deployment to robotics.
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Benefits
Remote Work Options
Flexible Work Hours
Health Insurance
401(k) Retirement Plan
Paid Vacation
Paid Holidays
Wellness Program
Gym Membership
Phone/Internet Stipend
Professional Development Budget
Conference Attendance Budget
Family Planning Benefits
Fertility Treatment Support
Parental Leave
Adoption Assistance
Childcare Support
Meal Benefits
Employee Discounts
Company Equity
Stock Options
Mental Health Support
Relocation Assistance
Training Programs
Tuition Reimbursement
Professional Certification Support
Mentorship Program
Performance Bonus
Profit Sharing
Employee Referral Bonus
Sabbatical Leave
Hybrid Work Options
Paid Sick Leave
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↓ -2%1 year growth
↓ -2%2 year growth
↑ 0%What bricklaying has taught Monumental about robots in construction. Currently, 92% of contractors have a difficult time filling roles in construction, according to the Association of General Contractors. At the same time, the U.S. is short 4.5 million homes. Developers like Monumental are betting on robots to help bridge this gap. Construction's labor issues will only continue to get worse, assuming the current trends continue. More and more people are retiring from the industry, while fewer young people are interested in getting into it. Salar al Khafaji, the founder and CEO of Monumental, believes construction's labor shortage presents a unique opportunity for robotics. "Construction is a really interesting use case for robots and AI, because it's one of the few industries where the narrative is really not AI and robots coming in to replace labor to make things cheaper or redundant," al Khafaji told The Robot Report. "It's literally there's not enough people to do the work. We desperately need this technology." Monumental is developing a fleet of robots that can handle construction tasks. The company decided to start with bricklaying for two main reasons. The first is because bricklaying is difficult work, said al Khafaji. He said he believes if the team can automate this task, it can likely take on a range of other tasks on a construction site. The second reason goes back to labor. "If you look at Western Europe, bricklayers are literally the No. 1 job-shortage category in multiple countries, like the U.K., the Netherlands, and Germany," al Khafaji said. The three stages of construction, and where robotics is seeing traction. You can break down the construction process of a typical home into three major stages, al Khafaji said. The first is in ground preparation, where you use excavators and ground movers to build the foundation of a building. This is the stage where The Robot Report has seen the most momentum for robotics so far. "We're seeing a lot of autonomous construction robotics companies that are doing excavators, ground movers, Caterpillar-like machines," al Khafaji said. "These are heavy machines, they're not precise." In this stage, there are companies like Bedrock Robotics, Gravis Robotics, TerraFirma, HIVE, Built Robotics, and more. These companies have seen some large funding round recently, including $200 million for Gravis Robotics, $115 million for TerraFirma, and $270 million for Bedrock Robotics. Monumental doesn't see these companies as its competitors, as it works in the second phase of construction, building the shell. "We want to do brickwork, but also block work and other things just to build our shell," al Khafaji said. "That's where I actually see not a lot of competition today." Then there is the finishing phase, where you have to put up drywall, lay flooring, and do all the things that turn a shell of a building into a home. This category, al Khafaji said, has had even less interest from robotics. There was Canvas Robotics, which created drywall finishing robots. The company's core technology was acquired by Oshkosh at the start of this year. Much of construction work boils down to material handling. Monumental has built three robots to handle the bricklaying process on construction sites. "The main robot that you can see in our videos is called Pisa. That the pick and place and the bricklaying robot. It has two tiny tower cranes, basically with two arms. It's non-humanoid," al Khafaji said. Pisa has one arm that picks and places the bricks while the other extrudes mortar to place in between the bricks. The other two robots on the site are in charge of making sure Pisa has enough bricks and mortar to keep working. One, Petra, brings bricks, while the other, Panama, supplies mortar. "A lot of things in construction actually are about material handling," al Khafaji said. "If you go observe construction workers, you see them with wheelbarrows moving around material all the time. Solving material handling is really important on a construction site." Monumental's three robots are built on the same platform, which opens the door to adding more robots to the fleet in the future. al Khafaji estimated that only 10% of the technology the company is building is strictly related to brick-laying. The other 90% is technology that is more generally related to operating a robot in a construction site. Additionally, the team uses Pathion, a mushroom-shaped device, to help the robots communicate. The company puts one or more at a worksite and it provides 4G, 5G, Starlink computes, and Wi-Fi. How do you navigate a fragmented industry? On any one construction site, there could be upwards of a dozen subcontractors working together to make a final product. This makes the industry very fragmented, which can be an advantage and a disadvantage. Monumental navigates this by acting as another subcontractor on the site, it just shows up with a team of robots instead of people. "In other industries, you actually might struggle, because you have to deeply integrate into some enterprise customers," al Khafaji said. For example, if you want to sell to a large automotive company, you're going to have to integrate into its existing infrastructure. "No one is vertically integrated. It is fragmented," al Khafaji said. "So, they're used to, if I need this thing to be done, I need foundations to be poured, or plumbing to be done, I'm just going to call up this company, and they're going to send a couple of dudes, and they're just going to do the thing. That's how they operate. No one expects that subcontractor to follow their playbook." But there are challenges that come with working on a site with a range of subcontractors. Challenges that any subcontractor, robotic or not, would have to grapple with. "The challenges basically have to do with all the dependencies," al Khafaji said. "You can do everything right, but if you show up and the bricks were not delivered, you're not going to lay bricks. It doesn't really matter how good your robots are." There are some companies, like Reframe Systems, that are taking a completely different approach. Instead of acting as a contractor, Reframe seeks to build entire homes using its robotic microfactories. Learning from deployments will be key to scaling. So far, Monumental has learned its biggest lessons from being out in the field deploying its robots. The company prioritized getting deployments in its first year of operation. "We've always said we don't want to be a robotics lab where we build stuff that doesn't touch the reality for a year or something like that," al Khafaji said. On site, the team has come across scenarios it could spend years trying to predict and plan for. For example, al Khafaji said, before its early deployments, the team had spent a lot of time training its computer vision models to recognize bricks, which are similarly shaped but not completely uniform. "We use computer vision models to measure them, to identify them, to look at the corners," al Khafaji said. "There's all this stuff happening, and we only heard a couple weeks before that deployment that the bricks that were going to be used were pitch black bricks, absolutely pitch black. I'd never seen them before." The model, which had been trained on the typical red bricks and some other lighter colors, was not able to recognize the black ones. The team had to retrain it to be able to handle the job. "We got new data. This is actually why it's great to do these deployments. You get real-world data," al Khafaji said. Right now, the robotic construction industry is generally in the small pilots stage, which is really a learning stage, al Khafaji said. "You need more examples of brick colors, weather, construction size, different regions, different countries, different regulations. Then you build a data set rich enough where you can 10x now, we can 100x now, and it's not going to break apart. We understand the edge cases," al Khafaji said. al Khafaji asserted that it's more of a matter of time and getting the work done and said he believes robots will only continue growing in construction.
Here's why the future of bricklaying might just be robots. Inside Monumental's mission to automate construction without sacrificing skilled jobs or architectural beauty. In our latest episode of Lexicon, Monumental founder and CEO Salar al Khafaji joined us to discuss why construction may be one of technology's most overlooked industries. From the challenge of deploying autonomous robots on unpredictable building sites to the possibility of using fleets of specialised machines to tackle rising construction costs and housing shortages, the conversation explores what it takes to move robotics out of the laboratory and into the real world. Bringing robotics into construction. In al Khafaji's view, construction has received less attention from technology companies than its economic and social importance warranted. Before founding the company, al Khafaji had created data visualisation firm Silk, later acquired by Palantir. His next venture, he said, needed to have a more tangible impact. "I very quickly realised that meaningful to me meant it had to be physical," he said. "How much can I achieve by basically building dashboards on computer screens?" he added. Construction stood out because of its scale, limited productivity growth and effect on housing costs. "Construction is really, really big," he said. "Technology people and technology founders deeply underrate it," he added. To this end, Monumental has developed autonomous robots that transport materials and build brick walls on commercial sites. But al Khafaji said operating outside controlled environments introduced a very different set of challenges.
Monumental raises $32 million to expand autonomous construction robots. Discover more Engineering & Technology Machine Learning Services Robotics and Automation Monumental, the Amsterdam-based tech company automating construction with robotics and software, has announced a $32 million Series B led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from existing investors Plural and Hummingbird. The funding will grow Monumental's world-class team of hardware and software engineers, scale the number of robots it can deploy across Europe and the UK, deepen its UK presence, expand the range of construction tasks the robots can handle, and fund its expansion into the US. Britain does not have the people it needs to build. To hit the government's target of 1.5 million new homes, the Home Builders Federation estimates the country needs at least 20,000 more bricklayers, yet only around 1,990 completed apprenticeships in 2024. Monumental is closing that gap with a fleet of more than 150 robots already working as an autonomous subcontractor on real job sites. Salar al Khafaji, co-founder and CEO, Monumental, says: "The world simply does not have enough people to build what it needs, and that shortage will not be solved by another app or another robot doing backflips on stage. Discover more Business & Productivity Software "It takes machines that turn up on site and lay real brick all day, to spec, which is what its fleet already does today. "Every robot we deploy expands the industry's capacity to build, bringing a future of beautiful, affordable, bespoke buildings and infrastructure closer to reality. Khosla's investment lets us put many more of them to work in more countries while expanding beyond bricklaying." Monumental's electric, autonomous robots use advanced sensors, computer vision, and cranes to lay brick and mortar with millimetre precision, operated by its AI platform, Atrium. Having already built the walls of more than 100 homes across the Netherlands and the UK, along with a school, a community centre, a hotel, and canal walls, Monumental has proved that autonomous construction works. The pace is accelerating fast, with nearly half of those homes built in the past three months alone, up from just eight the quarter before. "Construction costs have exploded while the industry itself has barely changed in decades," said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. "That combination has produced the housing crisis: Robotics & Automation News know how to build, Robotics & Automation News has just made it too expensive and too slow. "Monumental is solving this by bringing robotics into the physical world, and the proof is already standing: canal walls, houses, a school, 100 structures already built by robots. Beautiful buildings, built at scale, don't have to cost what they cost today." Construction is the one major industry that modern technology has barely touched. Since 1945, manufacturing productivity has risen more than eightfold while construction productivity has gained roughly 10 percent and has fallen since the 1960s. Buildings go up no faster than they used to, even as the need for them grows. The result in Britain is an acute housing shortage: the Centre for Policy Studies puts the UK's shortfall at 6.5 million homes, with just 446 homes per 1,000 people, the second-worst in Europe. Monumental adds the capacity the industry cannot hire, building the homes the country needs while crews move up into safer, higher-skilled roles operating the robots. Sten Tamkivi, partner at Plural, said: "Since its first investment, Monumental has become one of the most deployed autonomous construction operators in the world, solving a global-scale problem from the heart of Europe. "That's not a coincidence - it's the result of the right team with the right approach to finally close the gaps, not just plaster over them." Contractors engage Monumental as a subcontractor and pay for finished wall rather than buying machines, which removes the financial and technical risk of owning and operating equipment. The model is outcome-priced and forward-deployed, so customers pay for the wall that gets built. Salar al Khafaji and Sebastiaan Visser previously built Silk, acquired by Palantir in 2016, and Monumental was the first company to bring Palantir's forward-deployed engineering model to robotics, years before the rest of the industry caught on. Monumental builds across the Netherlands and the UK. It recently deepened its UK presence with a dedicated country manager and a growing on-the-ground team, and is expanding internationally, with its first US pilots planned.
Robotics: Dutch startup Monumental raises $32 million to deploy its "bricklaying robots" in Europe and the United States. Monumental is developing several robots capable of automating wall construction, from transporting bricks and mortar to laying them, all coordinated by a proprietary AI platform. After building the walls of more than 100 structures in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, the startup wants to strengthen its presence in Europe and establish itself in the United States. Published on July 16, 2026 at 6:25 p.m. 2 million: this is the number of additional construction workers that would need to be recruited in Europe by 2030 to meet demand, according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). In France, more than 20,000 qualified bricklayer positions remain unfilled, making it the most sought-after job in the sector. A tool capable of detecting inconsistencies to the nearest millimeter. Robotics could help address this shortage, and Monumental intends to be part of it. The Dutch startup behind the "bricklaying robots" announced on July 15 a Series B funding round of $32 million (€28 million), led by American venture capitalist Khosla Ventures with support from Plural and Hummingbird. It had already raised $25 million (€21.8 million) in February 2024. Monumental offers three different robots: the first, Petra, transports bricks to the construction site while Panama carries mortar. The third, Pisa, lays the bricks and builds the walls. To coordinate operations, the startup developed a platform called Atrium. It integrates a design tool, allowing the position of each brick joint and mortar to be calculated in advance according to the constraints defined by the architect. The startup then performs a 3D reconstruction of the site using photogrammetry and compares it with digital scans, enabling inconsistencies to be detected to the nearest millimeter. Houses, schools, hotels, canal banks... Each robot is equipped with various sensors and cameras, allowing Monumental's teams to locate the systems and cross-reference the images with the digital twin thus created. "Our central planner interprets sensor data in real time to guide each robot segment by segment, row by row, brick by brick," details the startup. A neural network trained to detect brick angles avoids off-centering errors. The startup, which charges for its bricklaying service based on results, explains that its robots "have already built the walls of more than 100 houses in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, as well as a school, a community center, a hotel, and sections of canal banks." With this funding round, it plans to strengthen its engineering team, accelerate its deployment across the European continent, and establish itself in the United States. It also hopes to expand the range of construction tasks its robots can perform. Yoann Bourgin, robotics and autonomous mobility journalist Our journalists select the essential articles for your industry. Your email is processed by our press title, which according to the title belongs to one of the following companies... Seeks digital talent The federal complaint that led to the arrest of Peter Stokes, a suspected member of Scattered Spider, reveals Microsoft's use of a unique identifier associated with a Windows installation, which does not change over system updates. Called "Global Device Identifier", it allowed the FBI to cross-reference several technical elements and raises questions about the telemetry data associated with this identifier. Digital employment Webinars
Khosla backs robot bricklayers with $32m as UK trades shortage bites. A fleet of more than 150 robots is already laying bricks on real construction sites across the UK and Europe, and the company behind them has just raised $32 million to put more of them to work, in a deal that says as much about Britain's vanishing trades as it does about the rise of physical AI. Monumental, the Amsterdam-based construction robotics company, announced the Series B led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Plural and existing investors including Hummingbird. The money will grow its engineering team, scale the fleet across Europe, deepen its UK presence and fund a US launch this year. For UK housebuilders and the small firms that supply them, the timing is pointed. The Home Builders Federation estimates the country needs at least 20,000 more bricklayers to hit the government's target of 1.5 million new homes, yet only around 1,990 completed apprenticeships in 2024. It is a gap Business Matters has tracked closely, with a skills crisis already threatening the 1.5 million homes target and 76 per cent of construction firms struggling to hire. Monumental's answer is not to sell machines but to work as an autonomous subcontractor. General contractors hire the company and pay for finished wall, an outcome-priced model that spares builders, many of them SMEs, the financial and technical risk of owning and operating the equipment themselves. The robots are electric and autonomous, using advanced sensors, computer vision and cranes to lay brick and mortar with millimetre precision, all orchestrated by the company's AI platform, Atrium. The fleet has built the walls of more than 100 homes across the Netherlands and the UK, along with a school, a community centre, a hotel and canal walls. The pace is accelerating: nearly half of those homes went up in the past three months alone, up from just eight the quarter before. "The world simply does not have enough people to build what it needs, and that shortage will not be solved by another app or another robot doing backflips on stage," said Salar al Khafaji, co-founder and CEO of Monumental. "It takes machines that turn up on site and lay real brick all day, to spec, which is what our fleet already does today. Every robot we deploy expands the industry's capacity to build, bringing a future of beautiful, affordable, bespoke buildings and infrastructure closer to reality. Khosla's investment lets us put many more of them to work in more countries while expanding beyond bricklaying." The backdrop is an industry that technology has barely touched. Since 1945, manufacturing productivity has risen more than eightfold while construction productivity has gained roughly 10 per cent, and has fallen since the 1960s. The result is a housing shortage the Centre for Policy Studies puts at 6.5 million homes, with just 446 homes per 1,000 people, the second-worst rate in Europe. In the capital, where London built just 7 per cent of the homes it needed last year, the delivery gap is starker still. "Construction costs have exploded while the industry itself has barely changed in decades," said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. "That combination has produced the housing crisis: we know how to build, we've just made it too expensive and too slow. Monumental is solving this by bringing robotics into the physical world, and the proof is already standing: canal walls, houses, a school, 100 structures already built by robots. Beautiful buildings, built at scale, don't have to cost what they cost today." Founded in 2021 by al Khafaji and CTO Sebastiaan Visser, whose previous company Silk was acquired by Palantir in 2016, Monumental was the first to bring Palantir's forward-deployed engineering model to robotics. It has recently appointed a dedicated UK country manager and is growing its on-the-ground team here. Nor is it an isolated bet. From bricklaying to fruit picking, where Dogtooth raised £14 million this month to help growers beat labour shortages, investors are backing robots to do the physical work Britain cannot find the people for. Monumental says its crews move up into safer, higher-skilled roles operating the machines. The bricks, it seems, will get laid either way. July 15, 2026