Machine Learning Engineer - Agents & Systems

Role Overview

Machine Learning Engineer – Intelligent Agents & Systems at Zyphra
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Zyphra is an AI company based in Palo Alto, California. The role focuses on building next‑generation autonomous agents that navigate the web, interact with file systems, and perform complex user tasks.

• Design and implement an agentic system capable of interacting with browsers, operating systems, and enterprise file systems.
• Build search and retrieval pipelines across large‑scale structured and unstructured data.
• Integrate LLMs, vision models, reinforcement learning, and scaffolding frameworks for autonomous, multi‑step decision‑making.
• Engineer secure virtualized runtimes and backend services for agent execution.
• Build production‑grade ML systems that push the boundary of what software agents can do.
• Reduce friction and iterate quickly in fast‑moving and ambiguous environments.

• Proficiency in Python and deep understanding of building and debugging complex ML‑driven applications.
• Experience with desktop operating systems (Windows and macOS), including APIs for screen reading, file interaction, and accessibility frameworks.
• Experience developing browser extensions or automation tools with fine‑grained control over the browser (mouse, tabs, DOM).
• Understanding of LLMs, prompting techniques, and orchestration frameworks for multi‑step reasoning.
• Ability to work across the full ML stack, from model integration to serving infrastructure.
• Experience designing or working with secure and virtualized execution environments.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills across product, research, and engineering teams.

• Experience building or integrating retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) systems.
• Experience with enterprise security and compliance frameworks (e.g., SOC
  2).
• Familiarity with vector databases and large‑scale document indexing.
• Knowledge of web automation tools and headless browser environments (e.g., Puppeteer, Playwright).
• Understanding of sandboxed or containerized compute environments with strict access controls.
• Comfort designing user‑facing agentic workflows and reasoning systems that span multiple modalities (text, vision, actions).
• Experience using and fine‑tuning models for screen reading, OCR, or UI understanding.
• Background in HCI or interest in building intuitive agent interfaces that extend human capabilities.

• Research methodology focuses on grounded, methodical progress toward ambitious goals, with both deep research and engineering excellence equally valued.
• Strong culture of fostering new and ambitious ideas and willingness to bet big on them.
• Fast decision process with emphasis on minimizing the bar to impact.
• Team members enjoy working on AI and actively discuss it.

• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and FSA plans.
• Competitive compensation and 401(k) matching.
• Relocation and immigration support on a case‑by‑case basis.
• On‑site meals prepared by a dedicated culinary team;
  Thursday happy hours.
• In‑person team in Palo Alto, CA, with a collaborative, high‑energy environment.