Distyl AI is hiring a Forward Deployed AI Architect. In this role, you will take full ownership of how intelligent systems are structured, integrated, secured, and operated in production for Fortune 500 customers. You will act as a trusted technical counterpart to customer leadership, making architectural decisions that balance capability, risk, and operational reality.
What You'll Do
- Own the technical shape of AI systems deployed in customer environments.
- Define how models, agents, data pipelines, APIs, and orchestration layers fit together and integrate with existing enterprise infrastructure.
- Build reference implementations, review and evolve production systems, and step in directly on high-risk or high-impact technical problems.
- Ensure architectural coherence across teams and over time, keeping systems composable, secure, observable, and adaptable.
- Investigate how AI systems, legacy systems, and human operators interact in practice.
- Identify failure modes, risk surfaces, and integration bottlenecks, and establish guardrails and patterns.
- Act as peers to senior technical leaders in customer engagements, whiteboarding architectures and translating business objectives into executable system designs.
What We're Looking For
- 5+ years of software engineering experience.
- Proven ownership of complex distributed system architecture, including designing, building, and operating them in production.
- Depth in AI systems and integration, understanding how AI components interact with data platforms, APIs, and existing services.
- Strong security and risk intuition with a security-first mindset and practical experience around data access, identity, auditability, and compliance.
- Hands-on execution, writing and reviewing production code, building critical integration paths, and staying close to the system.
- Customer-facing technical credibility, able to engage confidently with senior customer engineers and operators.
Benefits & Compensation
- Salary range: $130K – $250K + meaningful equity.
- 100% covered medical, dental, and vision for employees and dependents.
- 401(k) with additional perks (e.g., commuter benefits, in‑office lunch).
- Access to state‑of‑the‑art models and generous usage of modern AI tools.
- Ownership of high‑impact projects across top enterprises.
Work Mode
This is a hybrid position based in our San Francisco or New York offices.
Distyl AI is an equal opportunity employer.
