Member of Technical Staff - System Engineering

Phylo; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary and equity

Full medical, dental, and vision coverage

401(k) plan

Unlimited PTO

Free lunch and snacks

Regular team offsites

Culture of excellence and speed

Job summary

Phylo, based in South San Francisco, is seeking an experienced engineer to build and operate the core systems of its agentic AI platform. You will design distributed systems, ensure reliable infrastructure, and partner with teams to enhance workflows. The ideal candidate has over 3 years of experience in distributed systems and strong skills in programming, Kubernetes, and cloud environments. The role offers a competitive salary between $200K and $300K, full medical benefits, unlimited PTO, and an engaging company culture.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of industry experience in backend, infrastructure, or distributed systems engineering.
• Strong proficiency in at least one programming language (e.g., Python, Go, Rust, or similar).
• Experience designing and operating distributed systems in production.
• Deep hands-on experience with containerization and Kubernetes.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code tooling.
• Experience operating systems on at least one major cloud provider.
• Comfort owning systems end-to-end in fast-moving environments.

Responsibilities

• Design and build production systems that orchestrate agent execution.
• Build and operate scalable, reliable infrastructure across environments.
• Develop systems for secure task isolation and compliance foundations.
• Partner closely with ML and science teams for robust distributed systems.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

Containerization

Kubernetes

Infrastructure as code

Python

Cloud computing

Tools

Terraform

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

About Phylo

Phylo is an applied research lab building agentic intelligence to accelerate discovery for every biomedical scientist. We believe AI agents will fundamentally transform how biomedical research is done, enabling faster and more systematic scientific progress.

Our growing team brings together world-class researchers and engineers across AI and biology. Backed by a $13.5M seed round led by a16z, Menlo Ventures and Anthropic, and advised by Nobel Prize laureate and pioneering biologists, Phylo is building the next generation of AI systems for the life sciences.

About The Role

We’re looking for an engineer to build and operate the core systems that power Phylo’s agentic AI platform in production. You’ll design and implement the distributed systems, compute environments, and service architecture that allow our AI agents to run reliably at scale—across cloud-native deployments and enterprise environments. We are an AI-native engineering team: we use coding agents heavily, move fast, and hold a very high bar for engineering excellence.

What You’ll Work On

• Design and build production systems that orchestrate agent execution and power AI-driven scientific workloads.
• Build and operate scalable, reliable infrastructure across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem enterprise environments.
• Develop systems for sandboxed execution, secure task isolation, and controlled compute environments. Design and implement security, access control, and compliance foundations suitable for enterprise deployments.
• Partner closely with ML and science teams to translate computational workflows into robust, production-grade distributed systems.

Requirements

• 3+ years of industry experience in backend, infrastructure, or distributed systems engineering.
• Strong proficiency in at least one programming language (e.g., Python, Go, Rust, or similar).
• Experience designing and operating distributed systems in production.
• Deep hands‑on experience with containerization and Kubernetes.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code tooling (e.g., Terraform, Pulumi, or equivalent).
• Experience operating systems on at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Comfort owning systems end-to-end in fast-moving, high-autonomy environments.

Nice to Haves

• Experience building enterprise SaaS platform that supports single‑tenant, customer-hosted deployment patterns.
• Experience in building R&D infrastructure at Pharma/Biotech.
• Experience with job orchestration, task scheduling, or workflow engines.
• Experience with sandboxed or isolated execution frameworks (e.g., gVisor, Kata Containers, Firecracker).
• Familiarity with distributed storage, observability systems, or high-performance compute environments.

Why Join Us?

• Competitive salary and equity share in building the future of biomedical discovery.
• Full medical, dental, and vision coverage, including free therapy sessions and eyewear stipend.
• 401(k) to help you build long-term financial security (US only).
• Unlimited PTO to recharge when you need it (US only).
• Lunch and snacks when you're in the office.
• Regular team offsites and company events.
• A culture of excellence and speed – we move fast, think big, and support each other every step of the way.
• Your work will directly impact our mission to 100X biomedical discoveries through AI.

Compensation Range: $200K - $300K