Applied AI Researcher (System Self-Construction)

Distyl; New York, San Francisco (NY, CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Medical insurance (100% for employee)

Dental insurance (100% for employee)

Vision insurance (100% for employee)

401(k)

Commuter benefits

In-office lunch

Job summary

Distyl in San Francisco is seeking an Applied AI Researcher for the System Self-Construction team. You will design architectures enabling autonomous generation and refinement of sub-systems, pushing the frontier of self-constructing AI. Hybrid in-office collaboration is required 3+ days a week.

The role emphasizes strong research credentials, experience with meta-learning, and building prototypes to validate ideas in enterprise settings.

Qualifications

• Strong research track record with publications or notable work.
• Experience with meta-learning, program synthesis, or evolutionary computation.
• Ability to prototype ideas and run experiments to prove effectiveness.

Responsibilities

• Design architectures for autonomously generating, assembling, and refining sub-systems.
• Study recursive design principles and how systems understand and redesign themselves.

Skills

Research track record

AI systems design

Meta-learning

Program synthesis

Graph-of-thoughts

Prototyping ideas

Data analysis

Python/AI tooling

Job description

Applied AI Researcher, System Self-Construction

Distyl |

Distyl | Posted Mar 2

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Full-time

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About Distyl AI

Distyl is an applied AI technology company partnering with the world’s most ambitious institutions to rearchitect critical operations for the frontier of AI. Our customers include the largest companies in telecom, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, consumer goods, and global social organizations. We research and deploy technologies that power AI-native operations—both for our partners and for Distyl itself. Our work spans research into self-constructing systems, the development of the most reliable execution of AI systems, and products that transform mission-critical workflows. As a result, Distyl's technologies affect some of the world's largest operations—from hundreds of millions of consumer interactions to tens of millions of supply chain transactions and millions of patient journeys. Distyl is backed by leading investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Coatue, DST Global, and the board members of 20+ F500s. The results reflect this approach: a 100% production deployment success rate for our customers and one of the few enterprise AI companies to run a profitable business.

What We Are Looking For

At Distyl we’re pushing the envelope of AI utilization in enterprise. This requires creative researchers who don’t just want to drive incremental improvements on benchmarks or optimize an existing process but instead are looking to creatively redefine how software is used. Our researchers come from many academic backgrounds but have strong research track records, operate in an AI-native way, and would be bored staying on the rails of a traditional research org.

Key Responsibilities

• The System Self-Construction team builds systems that can build other systems. Researchers design architectures capable of autonomously generating, assembling, and refining sub-systems. This involves developing meta-learning loops, automated pipeline generation, and self-architecting frameworks that reduce the human bottleneck in complex system creation.
• Researchers in Self-Construction study recursive design principles: how systems represent their own construction processes, evaluate them, and evolve. They draw from meta-learning, program synthesis, and evolutionary computation to explore what it means for a system to "understand" and redesign itself. Their work defines the frontier of self-referential, generative system architectures.

Who We Are

• Experience Building Modular and Composable Systems: You’ve engineered architectures where components interact dynamically (e.g. graph-based planners, agent orchestration frameworks, workflow engines, or automated pipeline builders).
• Experience Building with Models, Not Just Building Models: We develop intelligent systems using models rather than training or fine-tuning them. Ideal candidates have expertise in compound AI systems, agentic collaboration, and associated techniques (ensembling, ReAct, graph-of-thoughts, etc.).
• Proven Track Record of Research Results: Whether you’ve published in top journals, posted amazing work on twitter, or somewhere else we want to see what you’ve done.
• Uses AI Every Day: Before you can revolutionize someone else’s workflow, you need to revolutionize yours. You should be using tools like ChatGPT, Cursor, and Perplexity to accelerate your workflow.
• Strong Programming and Data Analysis Skills: While you might not consider yourself a software engineer you need to be able to build prototypes of your ideas and then perform the experiments to prove the effectiveness to a F500 Head of AI.
• Biases Towards Showing vs Telling: Our customers want to see the power of AI today vs discuss the most elegant idea that will take 5 years to realize.

What We Offer

• The base salary range for this role is $150K-250K, depending on experience, location, and level. In addition to base compensation, this role is eligible for meaningful equity, along with a comprehensive benefits package.
• 100% covered medical, dental, and vision for employees and dependents.
• 401(k) with additional perks (e.g., commuter benefits, in-office lunch).
• Access to state-of-the-art models, generous usage of modern AI tools, and real‑world business problems.
• Ownership of high-impact projects across top enterprises.
• A mission-driven, fast-moving culture that prizes curiosity, pragmatism, and excellence.

Distyl has offices in San Francisco and New York. This role follows a hybrid collaboration model with 3+ days per week (Tuesday-Thursday) in-office.

About the company

Distyl