Applied AI Researcher, System Self-Improvement
$150k - $250k • San Francisco • FullTime
Posted 1y 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 creative researchers to push the envelope of AI utilization in enterprise. This role focuses on building architectures that continuously evaluate and enhance their own performance, aiming to create AI systems that compound in capability through use. Researchers will design feedback-driven systems capable of detecting weaknesses, generating corrective hypotheses, and implementing improvements through reflection, retraining, or workflow adaptation. The work involves studying how systems can form self-models, exploring reflective reasoning, reward modeling, and self-evaluation techniques to enable autonomous evolution, bridging reinforcement learning, interpretability, and meta-optimization.
Responsibilities
- Design feedback-driven systems capable of detecting weaknesses, generating corrective hypotheses, and implementing improvements through reflection, retraining, or workflow adaptation.
- Study how systems can form self-models, understanding when, why, and how they succeed or fail.
- Explore reflective reasoning, reward modeling, and self-evaluation techniques to enable autonomous evolution.
- Pioneer continuously learning enterprise systems by bridging reinforcement learning, interpretability, and meta-optimization.
Requirements
- Experience building or studying systems that monitor, score, and adapt (e.g., evaluators, retrievers, iterative refinement loops, performance dashboards).
- Expertise in developing intelligent systems using models rather than solely training or fine-tuning them.
- Experience with compound AI systems, agentic collaboration, and associated techniques (e.g., ensembling, ReAct, graph-of-thoughts).
- Proven track record of research results (publications, public work, etc.).
- Daily use of AI tools like ChatGPT, Cursor, and Perplexity to accelerate workflows.
- Strong programming and data analysis skills to build prototypes and conduct experiments.
- Bias towards demonstrating results over theoretical discussion.
Benefits
- Base salary range of $150K – $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 (HSA, FSA, commuter accounts, 401(k), financial coaching).
- Comprehensive wellness benefits (physical fitness, mental well-being, fertility and family-building).
- Complimentary in-office lunches and snacks.
- Access to state-of-the-art AI models and generous usage of modern AI tools.
- Ownership of high-impact projects across top enterprises.