Applied AI Researcher, System Self-Improvement
$130k - $250k USD
About Distyl AI
Distyl AI develops production-grade AI systems to power core operational workflows for Fortune 500 companies. Powered by a strategic partnership with OpenAI, in-house software accelerators, and deep enterprise AI expertise, we deliver working AI systems with rapid time to value – within a quarter.
Our products have helped Fortune 500 customers across diverse industries, from insurance and CPG to non-profits. As part of our team, you will help companies identify, build, and realize value from their GenAI investments, often for the first time. We are customer-centric, working backward from the customer’s problem and holding ourselves accountable for creating both financial impact and improving the lives of end-users.
Distyl is led by proven leaders from top companies like Palantir and Apple and is backed by Lightspeed, Khosla, Coatue, Dell Technologies Capital, Nat Friedman (Former CEO of GitHub), Brad Gerstner (Founder and CEO of Altimeter), and board members of over a dozen Fortune 500 companies.
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-Improvement team builds architectures that continuously evaluate and enhance their own performance. Researchers design feedback-driven systems capable of detecting weaknesses, generating corrective hypotheses, and implementing their own improvements through reflection, retraining, or workflow adaptation. The goal: build AI systems that compound in capability through use.
Researchers in Self-Improvement study how systems can form self-models—understanding when, why, and how they succeed or fail. They explore reflective reasoning, reward modeling, and self-evaluation techniques to enable autonomous evolution. This work bridges reinforcement learning, interpretability, and meta-optimization to pioneer continuously learning enterprise systems.
Who You Are
Experience Building Feedback-Driven Systems: You’ve built or studied systems that monitor, score, and adapt—evaluators, retrievers, iterative refinement loops, or performance dashboards that close the feedback loop.
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 $130K – $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.