---
title: 'AI Engineer at Distyl AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ai-engineer-distyl-ai-san-francisco-e7kcw7bt96ty'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-12'
---

# AI Engineer at Distyl AI

- **Company:** Distyl AI
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-06-18
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/distyl/46728319-c47a-48c8-bbfb-af0d9bff2ea2

## Job description

## About Distyl AI

Distyl is an applied AI technology company partnering with the world’s most ambitious institutions to rearchitect critical operations for the frontier of AI. Our customers include the largest companies in telecom, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, consumer goods, and global social organizations.

We research and deploy technologies that power AI-native operations — both for our partners and for Distyl itself. Our work spans research into self-constructing systems, the development of the most reliable execution of AI systems, and products that transform mission-critical workflows. As a result, Distyl's technologies affect some of the world's largest operations — from hundreds of millions of consumer interactions to tens of millions of supply chain transactions and millions of patient journeys.

Distyl is backed by leading investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Coatue, DST Global, and the board-members of 20+ F500s.

## What We Are Looking For

AI Engineers build and operate production AI systems that deliver business value inside customer environments. This role is for engineers who thrive in ambiguous problem spaces, take ownership of outcomes, and want to work directly on AI systems that must perform reliably under enterprise constraints.

AI Engineers are hands-on builders. They design, implement, deploy, and iterate on end-to-end AI systems in close partnership with customers, subject matter experts, and other Distyl engineers. They translate messy operational needs into concrete system behavior, build the software and AI workflows required to support that behavior, and continuously improve systems through evaluation, feedback, integration, and production iteration.

This is not a demo-building role. AI Engineers are expected to make AI systems work in practice: with users, data, constraints, and accountability for production outcomes.

## Key Responsibilities

- Build and operate AI systems deployed in customer environments, taking ownership of system behavior, reliability, and usefulness in production
- Design and implement compound AI workflows that combine models, prompts, agents, tools, retrieval, evaluation, feedback loops, and execution into coherent production systems aligned with user and SME needs
- Develop clean, maintainable Python services and application logic that integrate AI capabilities into customer workflows, data platforms, APIs, and existing applications
- Operate on live systems by measuring behavior, identifying failure modes, debugging issues, and iterating rapidly to improve quality, reliability, and user value
- Build evaluation frameworks, test cases, feedback mechanisms, and observability patterns that help teams understand and improve AI system performance over time
- Work directly with customer stakeholders and subject matter experts to understand workflows, clarify requirements, reason about tradeoffs, and adapt systems as needs evolve
- Use AI-native engineering tools to accelerate implementation, debugging, experimentation, data analysis, and system improvement
- Collaborate with other AI Engineers, AI Strategists, and other Distillers to make pragmatic system design decisions that balance speed, robustness, maintainability, and customer impact
- Take accountability for the production outcomes of the components, workflows, and systems you build

## What We Require

- 5+ years of software engineering experience
- Ownership mentality for AI systems. You take responsibility for whether the systems you build deliver their intended value in production. You are comfortable making technical decisions, learning from system behavior, and owning the results of your work
- Experience building AI systems. You have built applications powered by LLMs or other AI models and are comfortable composing multiple components — prompts, agents, tools, retrieval, evaluators, workflows, and integrations — into end-to-end systems. You reason about system behavior holistically rather than treating models as black boxes
- Strong engineering fundamentals. You write clean, maintainable Python and are comfortable building production software systems. You understand core engineering concepts like versioning, debugging, testing, performance, code review, and production readiness
- AI-native working style. You use AI tools daily to write and debug code, explore designs, analyze data, and automate repetitive work. You are curious about new model capabilities and techniques, and actively incorporate them into how you build and iterate on systems
- Comfort in customer environments. You are able to work directly with customer teams, ask good questions, and adapt quickly to new domains. You communicate clearly about system behavior, limitations, and tradeoffs, and can operate effectively in high-trust, high-visibility situations
- Pragmatic delivery mindset. You can navigate ambiguity, make progress with incomplete information, and balance speed with robustness when building systems that need to work for production users
- Willingness to travel. Travel is typically 10–30%, depending on the project, customer needs, and your role on the engagement

## What We Offer

- The base salary range for this role is $180K – $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

We 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.

## About Distyl AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Distyl AI partners with world-class institutions to rearchitect their operational systems for abundant intelligence, deploying AI-native workflows at production scale.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Arjun Prakash (Co-Founder, CEO) and Derek Ho (Co-Founder, COO)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: AI-Native Operations / Enterprise AI
- **Target Customers**: Large enterprises and institutions in regulated industries (Fortune 500 companies), specifically financial services, healthcare, telecom, insurance, manufacturing, and retail.
- **Mission/Purpose**: To help world institutions rearchitect their systems for abundant intelligence without sacrificing human agency and control.

## Products & Services
- **Distillery (Proprietary Platform)**: An agentic infrastructure platform that curates context from across the enterprise, enabling composable routines, policy-aware execution, and built-in auditability. It integrates with existing enterprise systems to allow for autonomous workflows.
- **Distyl Scans**: A service offering that provides enterprises with an “AI Readiness” score and a roadmap for adopting AI-driven technologies by surveying KPIs, business processes, data landscape, and tech stack.
- **AI-Native Workflows**: Custom, full-stack solutions deployed for specific industries, including intelligent underwriting, claims processing, prior authorization automation, and contact center intelligence.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Key Metrics**:
    - **Total Funding**: $202 million (across 3 rounds: Seed, Series A, Series B).
    - **Annual Revenue**: $1.0 million (per LinkedIn).
    - **Decisions Processed**: Over 1 billion decisions processed annually at production scale.
    - **Deployments**: 50+ enterprise deployments across Fortune 500 companies.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Lightspeed Venture Partners (led Series A & B), Khosla Ventures, DST Global, Coatue, Dell Technologies Capital, OpenAI, Microsoft.
- **Growth Signals**:
    - **Massive Headcount Growth**: 117 employees (+101.3% YoY, +77 people) as of recent data.
    - **Latest Funding**: Raised a $175 million Series B in October 2025.
    - **Industry Reach**: Active production deployments across 12 industries.
    - **Talent Pipeline**: Strong hiring from top-tier companies like Palantir, McKinsey, Amazon, and Microsoft.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Outcome Ownership**: Unlike a pure software vendor or consultancy, Distyl takes "Relentless Outcome Ownership," deploying solutions and managing them in production to ensure EBITDA impact within 6 months.
- **Full-Stack AI**: They combine strategy, research, and engineering to build and deploy production-grade systems, not just demos or proofs-of-concept.
- **Built for Regulated Industries**: Their platform is designed with dynamic guardrails and auditability, making them a trusted partner for sectors like healthcare and finance where compliance is non-negotiable.
- **Strong Backing**: Backed by a consortium of top-tier venture capital firms and strategic investors like OpenAI and Microsoft, providing deep resources and credibility.

## Strategic Focus
- **Defining the AI-Native Enterprise**: Distyl is focused on building the systems, workflows, and operational models that will define how large enterprises operate in the age of AI.
- **Agentic Systems at Scale**: Their current priority is deploying agentic systems that are practical, auditable, and safe, moving beyond simple automation to complex decision-making.
- **Industry Expansion**: With deployments in 12 industries, they are aggressively expanding their footprint in financial services, healthcare, and telecom, while also targeting supply chain and insurance.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & Work Style**: Described as fast-paced and outcome-oriented. The company values "relentless curiosity," direct feedback ("no ego-stroking"), and a bias for shipping real solutions. The work is described as defining the future of enterprise AI.
- **Remote/Hybrid Policy**: For all engineering roles and most other roles, the company requires in-office collaboration **3 days a week** in either San Francisco or New York City. They also have a London office.
- **Benefits & Perks**:
    - **Health & Wellness**: 100% coverage for medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and dependents. 8 weeks of parental leave. Flexible PTO.
    - **Compensation**: Competitive salary and meaningful equity. Retirement plans. Life and disability insurance.
    - **Additional**: Relocation support for moves over 100 miles. Daily meals and snacks in-office. Commuter benefits.
- **Engineering & Research Focus**: The interview process is practical, featuring collaborative live coding and system design discussions, and the use of AI is encouraged during interviews. They hire people who "make AI work better than anyone else."

## Sources
1. [distyl.ai](https://www.distyl.ai/)
2. [distyl.ai - About](https://www.distyl.ai/about)
3. [distyl.ai - Careers](https://www.distyl.ai/careers)
4. [LinkedIn - Distyl AI](https://www.linkedin.com/company/distylai)
5. [CB Insights - Distyl](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/distyl-ai)

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