MongoDB aggregation sort not working

The fields you're sorting on are part of the _id so you need to include that in your $sort field names:

db.builds.aggregate([
    { $group: { 
        _id: { 
            month: { $month: "$time" },
            day: { $dayOfYear: "$time" },
            year: { $year: "$time" }, 
            buildProjectName: "$data.buildProjectName", 
        },
        buildDuration: { $avg: "$data.buildDuration" } 
    } },
    { $sort: {
        '_id.buildProjectName': 1, 
        '_id.year': 1, 
        '_id.month': 1, 
        '_id.day': 1
    } }
])