Yes, you can gain search engine rankings at any time. SEO should obviously be part of the design process, so there is no point at which you 'start seo' after the design process has already begun.
What you can do, is to use noindex meta tags in your pages to prevent any temporary filler content from being indexed. Then once the site is complete, remove the noindex tags. It depends on whether the content on your pages is appropriate for indexing or not.
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