Distyl · 2 months ago
Applied AI Researcher, Post-Training
New York, NY
Full-time
Hybrid
Mid, Senior LevelDistyl is a company that develops AI native technologies for collaboration between humans and AI to enhance enterprise operations. They are seeking an Applied AI Researcher to focus on adapting foundation models to meet real-world performance and alignment needs, while also investigating methods to align large models with human objectives.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)Generative AIInformation TechnologySoftware
Responsibilities
The Post-Training team focuses on adapting foundation models to real-world performance and alignment requirements. Researchers develop and evaluate techniques such as supervised fine-tuning, preference optimization (DPO, RLHF, RLAIF), and continual adaptation to align models with Distyl’s enterprise systems. The goal is to bridge raw model capability with trustworthy, contextually aligned system behavior
Researchers in Post-Training investigate new methods for aligning large models with human and system-level objectives. They explore trade-offs between generalization and specialization, data efficiency and robustness, capability and controllability. Their work informs how Distyl leverages foundation models safely, effectively, and at scale across industries
Qualification
Required
Deep Understanding of Post-training Techniques: Familiarity with supervised fine-tuning, preference optimization (RLHF/DPO), LoRA/PEFT, and instruction-tuning pipelines
Experience Adapting Frontier Models: You've tuned or adapted LLMs/SLMs to specialized domains or behaviors through data curation, reward modeling, or continual pretraining
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
Benefits
Equity options
Medical/dental/vision covered at 100% for you and your dependents
401K plan
Commuter benefits
Lunch provided in office
Company
Distyl
Distyl AI partners with blue-chip leaders to help them create the enterprises of the future.
Founded in 2022
51-200 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Distyl has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (7)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$202MKey Investors
Lightspeed Venture Partners
2025-09-22Series B· $175M
2024-09-24Series A· $20M
2023-04-13Seed· $7M
Leadership Team
Arjun Prakash
Co-Founder, CEO
Derek Ho
Co-Founder, COO
Recent News
2025-10-27
Crunchbase News
2025-10-15
2025-10-02
Company data provided by crunchbase