Applied AI Researcher, System Self-Improvement

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 feedback-driven systems that monitor, score, and adapt.
• Experience building with models, not just building models; expertise in compound AI systems and agentic collaboration.
• 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

• Bias towards showing results rather than discussing theoretical ideas.

Responsibilities

• Build architectures that continuously evaluate and enhance their own performance.
• Design feedback-driven systems capable of detecting weaknesses, generating corrective hypotheses, and implementing their own improvements.
• Study how systems can form self-models—understanding when, why, and how they succeed or fail.
• Explore reflective reasoning, reward modeling, and self-evaluation techniques to enable autonomous evolution.
• Bridge reinforcement learning, interpretability, and meta-optimization to pioneer continuously learning enterprise systems.

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: Entry Level
• Number of Employees: 101-250 employees