Agent Systems Engineer

Adaption Labs; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work

Adaption Passport

Lunch Stipend: Weekly meal allowance

Well-Being: Medical benefits and PTO

Job summary

Adaption Labs is building agent systems at the core of our product in the Bay Area. You'll design and implement architectures that turn customer goals into reliable, multi-step executions across real tools and services, with real constraints and recovery from failures.

You will own planning, tool use, memory, and observability for agents, and develop evaluations to measure performance while balancing quality, latency, and cost.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building production ML or backend systems, including taking LLM or agent applications from prototype to production.
• Strong understanding of agent design: planning, reasoning, tool use, orchestration, and memory.
• Experience building rigorous evaluation systems, plus execution tracing and observability for agents, with a focus on reproducibility.
• Familiarity with the OpenAI Responses API, MCP, and server- versus client-side execution.

Responsibilities

• Design agent architectures for planning, reasoning, tool use, memory, and integration with external systems and data.
• Improve reliability on long-running, multi-step tasks, including failure recovery.
• Build the loops that let agents improve with real use, so performance compounds instead of staying frozen.
• Develop evaluations that measure agent performance and resist being gamed.
• Make practical tradeoffs between quality, latency, cost, and complexity.

Skills

Agent design

Planning & reasoning

Observability

Adaptability

Tools

OpenAI Responses API

MCP

Job description

The Role

You'll build the agent systems at the core of our product. These systems turn customer goals into reliable, multi-step execution across real tools and services.

This is not about building demos. You'll work on agents that operate under real constraints: incomplete information, external failures, limited budgets, and unpredictable traffic. You'll own how they plan, use tools, recover from errors, and improve over time.

Responsibilities

• Design agent architectures for planning, reasoning, tool use, memory, and integration with external systems and data.

• Improve reliability on long-running, multi-step tasks, including failure recovery.

• Build the loops that let agents improve with real use, so performance compounds instead of staying frozen.

• Develop evaluations that measure agent performance and resist being gamed.

• Make practical tradeoffs between quality, latency, cost, and complexity.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building production ML or backend systems, including taking LLM or agent applications from prototype to production.

• Strong understanding of agent design: planning, reasoning, tool use, orchestration, and memory.

• Experience building rigorous evaluation systems, plus execution tracing and observability for agents, with a focus on reproducibility.

• Familiarity with the OpenAI Responses API, MCP, and server- versus client-side execution.

Above all, we're looking for great teammates who make work feel lighter and aren't afraid to go out on a limb with bold ideas. You don't need to be perfect, but you do need to be adaptable.

About us

Most AI is frozen in place - it doesn't adapt to the world. We think that's backwards. Our mandate is to build efficient intelligence that evolves in real-time. Our vision is AI systems that are flexible, personalized, and accessible to everyone. We believe efficiency is what makes this possible - it's how we expand access and ensure innovation benefits the many, not the few. We believe in talent density: bringing together the best and most driven individuals to push the boundaries of continual adaptation. We're looking for builders and creative thinkers ready to shape the next era of intelligence.

Benefits

• Flexible work: In-person collaboration in the Bay Area, a distributed global-first team, and team offsites.

• Adaption Passport: Annual travel stipend to explore a country you've never visited. We're building intelligence that evolves alongside you, so we encourage you to keep expanding your horizons.

• Lunch Stipend: Weekly meal allowance for take-out or grocery delivery.

• Well-Being: Comprehensive medical benefits and generous paid time off.