Machine Learning Engineer - Intelligent Agents & Systems

Zyphra is an artificial intelligence company based in Palo Alto, California

The Role:

As a Machine Learning Engineer, you will be a core contributor to Zyphra’s Agentic Systems and Interaction projects. You will be at the forefront of building a next-generation desktop and browser-based agent that can autonomously navigate the web, interact with filesystems, and complete complex user tasks. This role spans frontend interfaces, secure sandboxing environments, large-scale document search and retrieval, and language/vision model integration.

You’ll work across:

* Design and implementation of an agentic system capable of interacting with browsers, operating systems, and enterprise filesystems

* Building search and retrieval pipelines across large-scale structured and unstructured data

* Integrating LLMs, vision models, reinforcement learning, and scaffolding frameworks for autonomous, multi-step decision-making

* Engineering secure virtualized runtimes and backend services for agent execution

* What matters most is your drive to build production-grade ML systems that push the boundary of what software agents can do

* We value velocity and curiosity, especially in fast-moving and ambiguous environments

Requirements:

* Proficiency in Python and a deep understanding of building and debugging complex ML-driven applications

* Experience working 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

Bonus Qualifications:

* Experience building or integrating retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems

* Experience working 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

Why Work at Zyphra:

* Our research methodology is to make grounded, methodical steps toward ambitious goals. Both deep research and engineering excellence are equally valued

* We strongly value new and crazy ideas and are very willing to bet big on new ideas

* We move as quickly as we can; we aim to minimize the bar to impact as low as possible

* We all enjoy what we do and love discussing AI

Benefits and Perks:

* Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and FSA plans

* Competitive compensation and 401(k)

* 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