AI Engineer
$180k - $250k • San Francisco • FullTime
Posted 4mo ago
Job Location
San Francisco
Tech Stack
Remote Work Policy
On-site
Employment Type
FullTime
Categories
Applied AI Engineer
About the job
Distyl AI is seeking hands-on AI Engineers to build and operate production AI systems that deliver business value within customer environments. This role is ideal for engineers who excel in ambiguous problem spaces, take ownership of outcomes, and are eager to work directly on AI systems that must perform reliably under enterprise constraints. AI Engineers will design, implement, deploy, and iterate on end-to-end AI systems in close partnership with customers, subject matter experts, and other Distyl engineers, translating operational needs into concrete system behavior and ensuring AI systems function effectively in practice with users, data, and accountability for production outcomes.
Responsibilities
- Build and operate AI systems deployed in customer environments, ensuring system behavior, reliability, and usefulness in production.
- Design and implement compound AI workflows combining models, prompts, agents, tools, retrieval, evaluation, feedback loops, and execution into coherent production systems.
- Develop clean, maintainable Python services and application logic to integrate AI capabilities into customer workflows, data platforms, APIs, and existing applications.
- Operate live systems by measuring behavior, identifying failure modes, debugging issues, and iterating rapidly to improve quality and reliability.
- Build evaluation frameworks, test cases, feedback mechanisms, and observability patterns to improve AI system performance.
- Collaborate with customer stakeholders and subject matter experts to understand workflows, clarify requirements, and adapt systems.
- Utilize AI-native engineering tools to accelerate implementation, debugging, experimentation, data analysis, and system improvement.
- Collaborate with other engineers and strategists on pragmatic system design decisions balancing speed, robustness, maintainability, and customer impact.
- Take accountability for the production outcomes of built components, workflows, and systems.
Requirements
- 5+ years of software engineering experience.
- Demonstrated ownership mentality for AI systems and comfort making technical decisions.
- Experience building AI systems, including applications powered by LLMs or other AI models, and composing multiple components into end-to-end systems.
- Strong engineering fundamentals with proficiency in clean, maintainable Python and experience building production software systems.
- Familiarity with core engineering concepts like versioning, debugging, testing, performance, code review, and production readiness.
- An AI-native working style, using AI tools daily for coding, debugging, design exploration, data analysis, and automation.
- Curiosity about new model capabilities and techniques, with a proactive approach to incorporating them.
- Comfort working directly with customer teams, asking clarifying questions, and adapting quickly to new domains.
- Clear communication about system behavior, limitations, and tradeoffs in high-trust, high-visibility situations.
- A pragmatic delivery mindset, capable of navigating ambiguity and balancing speed with robustness.
- Willingness to travel 10-30% depending on project needs.
Benefits
- Base salary range of $180K – $250K, depending on experience, location, and level.
- Meaningful equity.
- 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.
- Complimentary in-office lunches and snacks.
- Access to state-of-the-art AI models and generous usage of modern AI tools.