{"id":462732,"url":"https://alion.io/job/distyl-ai-ai-engineer","title":"AI Engineer","company":{"id":178214,"name":"Distyl AI","domain":"distyl.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/distyl-ai","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":72,"open_postings":26,"ghost_share":0.385,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":70,"computed_at":"2026-10-29T05:49:05Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States","New York, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":180000,"max":250000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":250000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Python","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-06-18T19:34:43Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-06-18","last_verified_at":"2026-10-29T05:55:12Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":132,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":132},"description":"About Distyl AI\nDistyl 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.\nWe 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.\nDistyl is backed by leading investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Coatue, DST Global, and the board-members of 20+ F500s.\nWhat We Are Looking For\nAI 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.\nAI 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.\nThis 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.\nKey Responsibilities\nBuild and operate AI systems deployed in customer environments, taking ownership of system behavior, reliability, and usefulness in production\n\nDesign 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\n\nDevelop clean, maintainable Python services and application logic that integrate AI capabilities into customer workflows, data platforms, APIs, and existing applications\n\nOperate on live systems by measuring behavior, identifying failure modes, debugging issues, and iterating rapidly to improve quality, reliability, and user value\n\nBuild evaluation frameworks, test cases, feedback mechanisms, and observability patterns that help teams understand and improve AI system performance over time\n\nWork directly with customer stakeholders and subject matter experts to understand workflows, clarify requirements, reason about tradeoffs, and adapt systems as needs evolve\n\nUse AI-native engineering tools to accelerate implementation, debugging, experimentation, data analysis, and system improvement\n\nCollaborate with other AI Engineers, AI Strategists, and other Distillers to make pragmatic system design decisions that balance speed, robustness, maintainability, and customer impact\n\nTake accountability for the production outcomes of the components, workflows, and systems you build\n\nWhat We Require\n5+ years of software engineering experience\n\nOwnership 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\n\nExperience 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\n\nStrong 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\n\nAI-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\n\nComfort 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\n\nPragmatic 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\n\nWillingness to travel. Travel is typically 10-30%, depending on the project, customer needs, and your role on the engagement\n\nWhat We Offer\nThe 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\n\n100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance for employee and dependents\n\nFlexible time off\n\nRetirement and financial planning benefits, including access to pre-tax HSA, FSA, and commuter accounts, 401(k), and financial coaching resources\n\nComprehensive wellness benefits, including physical fitness, mental well-being, and fertility and family-building benefits through Carrot\n\nComplimentary in-office lunches and snacks provided\n\nAccess to state-of-the-art AI models, generous usage of modern AI tools, and real-world business problems\n\nOwnership of high-impact projects across top enterprises\n\nA mission-driven, fast-moving culture that values curiosity, pragmatism, and excellence\n\nDistyl has offices in San Francisco and New York. This role follows a hybrid collaboration model with 3+ days per week (Tuesday-Thursday) in-office.\n#LI-Hybrid\nWe 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.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6634,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Flexible time off","Retirement plans","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["AI Consulting & Integration"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-06T11:31:03Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 19","filings_12m":19,"filings_prev_12m":5,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":212500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":13}],"liveness":{"score":24,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.672,"p_room":0.36,"age_days":132,"expected_fill_days":70,"reasons":["conf:3","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-29T05:49:05Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":250000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/distyl-ai-ai-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/distyl-ai-ai-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-29T06:07:31Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":9342,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-30T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":178214},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=178214"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fdistyl-ai-ai-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fdistyl-ai-ai-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fdistyl-ai-ai-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/distyl-ai-ai-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fdistyl-ai-ai-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":462732}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"distyl.ai","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":462732},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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