Applied AI Researcher, System Discovery

Distyl AI • San Francisco, CA

80d

About The Position

Distyl AI develops AI native technologies for humans & AI to collaborate to power the operations of the Global Fortune 1000. In just 24 months, we’ve rapidly grown to partner with some of the world’s largest enterprises—including F100 telecom, healthcare, manufacturing, insurance, and retail companies—delivering multiple AI deployments with $100M+ impact. Our platform, Distillery, along with our team of AI Engineers, Researchers, and Strategists, is pioneering AI-native systems of work, solving the most complex, high-stakes challenges at scale. Distyl is founded and led by proven leaders from companies like Palantir, Apple, and top national laboratories. We work in deep partnership with OpenAI, jointly going-to-market at the largest enterprises and collaborating evaluating and testing the latest models. Backed by Lightspeed, Khosla, Coatue, industry leaders like Nat Friedman (former GitHub CEO), as well as board members of over 20+ F500s, Distyl is building the future of AI-powered enterprise operations.

Requirements

• Experience building a wide breadth of systems including retrieval pipelines, reasoning agents, evaluation harnesses, multimodal integrations, or workflow graph systems.
• Experience building with models, focusing on developing intelligent systems using models rather than just training or fine-tuning them.
• Proven track record of research results, including publications in top journals or notable work shared publicly.
• Daily use of AI tools like ChatGPT, Cursor, and Perplexity to enhance workflow.
• Strong programming and data analysis skills to build prototypes and conduct experiments.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in compound AI systems and agentic collaboration techniques.
• Ability to demonstrate the power of AI through practical applications rather than theoretical discussions.

Responsibilities

• Identify entirely new classes of AI systems through hypothesis generation.
• Explore a wide range of architectures, modalities, and compositions to uncover how AI can reshape work.
• Draw connections across disparate domains to uncover new system archetypes.
• Experiment with unconventional problem definitions and develop prototypes that reveal new categories of human–AI collaboration.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and benefits package, including equity options.
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage at 100% for you and your dependents.
• 401K plan.
• Commuter benefits and lunch provided in office.
• Collaborative and intellectually stimulating environment.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 101-250 employees