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Member of Technical Staff - Agent Engineer

Join Phylo as a Member of Technical Staff to advance AI agents for biomedical discovery through engineering and evaluation.

Location
South San Francisco
Compensation
Not disclosed
Level
staff
Type
full time

Posted by employer 3 months ago

First seen on Joblaze 2 months ago

Last verified on the company career page 13 hours ago

Apply at Phylo → Save job Scanned from phylo.bio

AI in the day-to-day

We believe AI agents will fundamentally transform how biomedical research is done.

Not disclosed in this posting: compensation, years of experience, work arrangement, visa sponsorship.

Benefits

401k Match Unlimited PTO Equity/Stock Options Health Insurance

Joblaze summary

In the role of Member of Technical Staff - Agent Engineer at Phylo, the engineer focuses on enhancing AI agent systems by integrating cutting-edge research and evaluating their performance in real-world applications. Key skills include strong software engineering, familiarity with machine learning, and the ability to analyze and improve agent capabilities. This position is well-suited for individuals with a background in ML engineering or scientific computing, particularly those who thrive in AI-driven environments. Phylo's collaborative culture emphasizes rapid innovation and the application of AI to transform biomedical research.

Joblaze insights

  • Listed about 2 months ago — first seen on Joblaze September 3, 2026. Last confirmed on Phylo's careers page November 10, 2026.
  • AI/ML appears in 33.5% of 463 comparable staff ai/ml roles; infrastructure appears in 0.4% of 463 comparable staff ai/ml roles.

Quick facts

What's the tech stack?
Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: AI/ML, Kubernetes, LLM, Machine Learning, distributed systems, infrastructure.
What seniority level is this role?
Phylo targets staff-level candidates for this position.
Is this full-time or contract?
Full-time for this Member of Technical Staff - Agent Engineer role at Phylo.

From the original posting

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

  • Regular team offsites and company events

Standard company text repeated across Phylo's postings is omitted here.

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