Applied AI Researcher, System Self-Improvement

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 AreExperience 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 $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% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance for employee and dependents Flexible time off Retirement and financial planning benefits, including access to pre-tax HSA, FSA, and commuter accounts, 401(k), and financial coaching resources Comprehensive wellness benefits, including physical fitness, mental well-being, and fertility and family-building benefits through Carrot Complimentary in-office lunches and snacks provided Access to state-of-the-art AI 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 values 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.#LI-HybridWe believe diverse perspectives make our work stronger and more impactful. We are an equal opportunity employer and evaluate all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic. We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply. Location San Francisco; New York Employment TypeFull time Location TypeHybridDepartmentResearch