Applied AI Researcher, System Self-Improvement

Distyl AI

$150K — $250K *
Enterprise Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Experience building feedback-driven systems that adapt and enhance performance.
  • Experience building with models, focusing on intelligent systems rather than just training models.
  • Proven research track record, demonstrated through publications or impactful projects.
  • Daily use of AI tools such as ChatGPT to enhance personal workflow.
  • Strong programming and data analysis skills for prototyping and experimentation.
  • Bias towards showing tangible results rather than discussing long-term theoretical ideas.

Responsibilities

  • Build architectures for self-improvement that evaluate and enhance their own performance.
  • Design feedback-driven systems capable of detecting weaknesses and implementing improvements.
  • Study self-modeling in systems to understand their successes and failures.
  • Bridge reinforcement learning and interpretability to create continuously learning systems.
  • Explore reflective reasoning and reward modeling techniques for autonomous system evolution.

Benefits

  • Opportunities to advance cutting-edge LLM research and impact enterprise operations.
  • Ownership of high-impact research projects with autonomy for novel solutions.
  • Access to state-of-the-art AI models and real-world business problems.
  • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and their dependents.
  • Competitive benefits package including 401K, equity options, and commuter perks.
Full Job Description
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 $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-Hybrid

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