---
title: 'Member of Technical Staff - Agent Engineer at Phylo, Inc.'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-agent-engineer-phylo-inc-south-san-francisco-zy1rm4865jh5'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-12'
---

# Member of Technical Staff - Agent Engineer at Phylo, Inc.

- **Company:** Phylo, Inc.
- **Location:** South San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-07-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/phylo/fd68f3cc-def2-4944-b339-01cf1e962e63

## Job description

## About Phylo

Phylo is an applied research lab building agentic intelligence to accelerate discovery for every biomedical scientist. We believe AI agents will fundamentally transform how biomedical research is done. Our team brings together engineers, AI researchers, and scientists to build systems capable of carrying out complex scientific work.

## About the Role

We’re looking for an engineer with research or production experience in AI agents to build and evaluate systems that make our agents capable, reliable, and measurably better.

The model is only one part of an agent; the harness shapes how it plans, uses tools, manages context, coordinates work, and recovers from failure. You will own these systems in production and build evaluations to measure whether changes improve performance. The work includes bringing the latest advances and original ideas into production. The ideal candidate combines strong engineering execution with a quantitative mindset and an interest in AI agents for scientific discovery.

What you’ll do as a Member of Technical Staff - Agent Engineer at Phylo:

- Advance the agent harness by bringing the latest research and open-source developments into production and experimenting with new approaches to multi-agent coordination, model routing, memory, planning, and tool use.
- Build rigorous evaluations that measure agent quality, reliability, latency, and cost on representative scientific tasks.
- Monitor agent quality in production, troubleshoot failures quickly in high-ambiguity situations, and translate findings into engineering improvements.
- Collaborate on reliable infrastructure for long-running sessions, safe sandboxed execution, background work, and subagents.
- Partner with scientists and engineers to evaluate and productionize new agent capabilities.

What We're Looking For:

- Strong software engineering experience building production backend systems, infrastructure, or distributed systems.
- Research or production experience in machine learning, or another quantitative discipline.
- Familiarity with LLM APIs, tool calling, agent runtimes, or workflow orchestration.
- Strong quantitative judgment and the ability to determine whether an apparent improvement is real, reproducible, and meaningful.
- Ability to move between research questions, data analysis, system design, and production implementation.
- Experience or strong interest in AI for science, scientific agents, computational research, or automated scientific discovery.
- Experience working in AI-native teams that use coding agents or automation extensively.
- High ownership, clear communication, and strong engineering judgment.

We care more about demonstrated ability than a particular credential. Relevant backgrounds may include ML or LLM engineering, academic research paired with substantial software development, scientific computing, or production systems engineering with demonstrated quantitative experience.

Nice to haves:

- Experience with LLM evaluations, human evaluation, model judges, replay testing, benchmark design, or experiment tracking.
- Experience applying classical machine learning methods alongside LLMs in production systems.
- Experience with task queues, event streams, Kubernetes, code sandboxes, or durable workflow systems.
- An advanced degree or equivalent experience in machine learning, computational biology, physics, applied mathematics, statistics, or a related field.

Why Join Us?

- Competitive salary and equity share in building the future of biomedical discovery
- Full medical, dental, and vision coverage, including free therapy sessions and eyewear stipend
- 401(k) to help you build long-term financial security (US only)
- Unlimited PTO to recharge when you need it (US only)
- Lunch and snacks when you're in the office
- Regular team offsites and company events
- A culture of excellence and speed - we move fast, think big, and support each other every step of the way
- Your work will directly impact our mission to 100X biomedical discoveries through AI

## About Phylo, Inc.

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: An applied research lab building agentic AI for biomedical scientists, creating an Integrated Biology Environment (IBE) that functions as an IDE for biology.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage – $13.5M raised)
- **Headquarters**: South San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2025
- **Founders**: Kexin Huang (CEO) and Yuanhao Qu (President)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Artificial Intelligence / Biotechnology / Research Services
- **Target customers**: Biomedical scientists, research institutions, and biopharma enterprises (B2B)
- **Mission**: “Accelerate discoveries for every biomedical scientist” — building a collaborative AI workspace that lets biologists design experiments, analyze data, and reason through the scientific process in one environment.

## Products & Services
- **Biomni Lab** (Integrated Biology Environment – IBE)  
  **Type**: AI-native platform (SaaS)  
  A shared workspace where biologists and AI agents collaborate. Covers literature review, experiment design, data analysis, result interpretation, reagent ordering, and integration with external tools and robotic labs. Designed to be rigorous, personalized, and native to how biologists work.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding $13.5M (Seed round, February 2026); estimated annual revenue $264K
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Andreessen Horowitz (lead), Anthology Fund, Menlo Ventures (conflicting reports – Tracxn lists Menlo Ventures, LinkedIn names Anthology Fund)
- **Growth Signals**:
  - 8 full-time employees (LinkedIn) + 6 active job postings
  - Monthly headcount growth of +33.3% and job posting growth of +500% (LinkedIn)
  - First of its kind “Integrated Biology Environment” concept generating industry interest

## Competitive Advantages
- **Scientific rigor built in**: Agents are designed to challenge their own outputs, flag shaky assumptions, and keep a trail of evidence for reproducibility.
- **Native to biology**: Interface and interactions are based on biological concepts and real researcher workflows, not generic AI.
- **Personalized and collaborative**: The environment adapts to individual researcher preferences and tools, acting as a true partner.
- **Enterprise-grade security**: ISO 27001 certified and SOC 2 Type II compliant, ensuring data protection.

## Strategic Focus
- Continue advancing the IBE to close the loop between experiment design and robotic lab execution, reducing discovery cycles from weeks to hours.
- Expand integration with biomedical databases, models, and lab hardware.
- Scale the platform to serve more research organizations while maintaining scientific rigor and pragmatic usefulness.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Small, flat team (≈8 people) at an early stage, offering high ownership and impact. Founders (Kexin Huang, Yuanhao Qu) come from Stanford and have backgrounds in AI and biology.
- **Work policy**: Hybrid workspace with offices in South San Francisco (HQ), the Netherlands, and India; remote-friendly options.
- **Notable perks**: Cutting-edge applied research at the intersection of AI and biology; access to enterprise-grade infrastructure; chance to shape the next standard biomedical research tool.
- **Tech stack**: Kubernetes, Python, React, TypeScript, Nextflow, Slurm, Terraform, Lustre.
- **Open roles** (as of mid-2026): Engineering (Product, Systems, Infrastructure), Computational Biology, Enterprise GTM, Customer Success.

## Sources
1. [phylo.bio](https://phylo.bio)
2. [Phylo vision blog](https://phylo.bio/blog/vision)
3. [Built In company profile](https://builtin.com/company/phylo)
4. [LinkedIn company page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/phylo-bio)
5. [Tracxn company profile](https://tracxn.com/d/companies/phylo/__AluRJyaowMkNbsC-e9g_avW8Xbdxb26Epw4168-RJd4)

## Other roles at Phylo, Inc.

- [Member of Technical Staff – Product Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-product-engineering-phylo-inc-south-san-francisco-9j54arsktha1) — South San Francisco, CA
- [Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/recruiter-phylo-inc-south-san-francisco-pq8ydahxd8ve) — South San Francisco, CA
- [Security & Compliance Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/security-compliance-manager-phylo-inc-toronto-drnaahmvpbe7) — Toronto, Canada
- [Opportunistic Role](https://feeny.ai/job/opportunistic-role-phylo-inc-south-san-francisco-fc3evqtgt6bm) — South San Francisco, CA
- [Member of Technical Staff - Forward Deployed Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-forward-deployed-scientist-phylo-inc-south-san-e46qrrfnczag) — South San Francisco, CA
- [Enterprise Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-account-executive-phylo-inc-toronto-9944387tadgk) — Toronto, Canada / San Francisco Bay Area
- [Forward Deployed Strategist](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-strategist-phylo-inc-toronto-pxa2ayvc7xmf) — Toronto, Canada / San Francisco Bay Area
- [Member of Technical Staff - Infrastructure](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-infrastructure-phylo-inc-toronto-q1gkts3r79qs) — Toronto, Canada
- [Member of Technical Staff - System Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-system-engineering-phylo-inc-south-san-francisco-pjm60bthndbx) — South San Francisco, CA
- [Member of Technical Staff - Agent Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-agent-engineer-ellamind-bremen-n7298x0d15nk) — Bremen, Germany