AI Engineer

Distyl AI, an applied AI technology company partnering with leading institutions, is seeking an AI Engineer to build and operate production AI systems in customer environments. This hybrid role in New York, NY centers on owning end-to-end workflows and collaborating with customers, subject matter experts, and fellow Distyl engineers to deliver reliable, value-driven AI solutions. Join a team focused on transforming real-world operations with AI-native design and pragmatic engineering.

Responsibilities

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

Requirements

• 2+ years of software engineering experience
• Ownership mentality for AI systems, with responsibility for delivering intended value in production and comfort making technical decisions and learning from system behavior
• Experience building AI-powered applications, with hands-on work composing prompts, agents, tools, retrieval, evaluators, workflows, and integrations into end-to-end systems
• Strong engineering fundamentals, including clean Python code, production-ready software practices, versioning, debugging, testing, performance, code review, and maintainability
• AI-native working style, daily use of AI tools to write and debug code, explore designs, analyze data, and automate repetitive tasks
• Comfort working directly with customer teams, asking good questions, and communicating clearly about system behavior, limitations, and tradeoffs
• Pragmatic delivery mindset, capable of navigating ambiguity and balancing speed with robustness for production systems
• Willingness to travel 10–30% depending on project needs and role

Technologies

• Python

Benefits

• The base salary range for this role is $150K – $250K, dependent on experience, location, and level; equity eligibility and a comprehensive benefits package are also included
• 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance for employee and dependents
• Flexible time off
• Retirement and financial planning benefits, including pre-tax HSA/FSA, commuter accounts, 401(k), and financial coaching resources
• Wellness benefits spanning physical fitness, mental well-being, and fertility and family-building support through Carrot
• Complimentary in-office lunches and snacks
• Access to state-of-the-art AI models and generous usage of modern AI tools on real-world business problems
• Opportunity to own high-impact projects across top enterprises
• A mission-driven, fast-moving culture that values curiosity, pragmatism, and excellence

About Distyl AI

Distyl is an applied AI technology company collaborating with some of the world’s most ambitious institutions to reimagine critical operations for the AI frontier. Our customers span industries such as telecom, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, consumer goods, and global social initiatives. We research and deploy AI-native technologies that power operational intelligence for partners and for Distyl itself, including exploration into self-constructing systems and the development of enterprise-grade AI capabilities.

What We Are Looking For

AI Engineers at Distyl build and operate production AI systems that deliver tangible business value inside customer environments. The role suits engineers who thrive in ambiguous problem spaces, take ownership of outcomes, and work directly on AI systems that must perform reliably under enterprise constraints. These engineers are hands-on builders who design, implement, deploy, and iterate end-to-end AI solutions in close collaboration with customers, SMEs, and fellow Distyl colleagues. They translate messy operational needs into concrete system behavior, construct the software and AI workflows required to support that behavior, and continuously improve systems through evaluation, feedback, integration, and production iteration. This is a production-focused role rather than a demo-oriented position, with accountability for the outcomes of the systems and processes you create.