AI Operator (Research Programs)

Join Distyl, a leading AI company that deploys production AI in complex operating environments. As an AI Operator, you will be responsible for enforcing operational rigor, driving stakeholder alignment, and operating at maximum velocity. You will partner with research and engineering leadership to ensure programs ship with velocity and accountability. This role requires a strong communicator, a chaos wrangler, and someone who is accountable and has a background that proves it.

• Enforce operational rigor by ensuring goals are clear, commitments are kept, and risks are understood.
• Drive stakeholder alignment by navigating executive, technical, and business stakeholders with confidence and providing clear reporting on program status.
• Keep programs moving in fast-changing environments by adapting quickly when priorities shift without losing momentum.
• Travel: Expect ~20% travel
• AI-Native, Not Just AI-Curious: You actively use frontier AI tools in your daily work and have a track record of reinventing your own workflows as the technology evolves. You have strong opinions about what's changing fast, and you hold yourself and your teams to the standard of staying ahead of it — not catching up to it
• Comfortable in Chaos: You thrive in fast-moving environments where priorities shift and the path forward isn't always clear. You find the path anyway
• A Strong Communicator Across All Levels: You switch seamlessly between technical deep-dives with engineers and high-level strategic conversations with executives
• A Raiser of the Bar: You have seen what excellence looks like at scale — and you use that benchmark to raise the operating cadence of every team you join. You don't just know what good looks like in theory; you've lived it, and you won't accept less
• A Chaos Wrangler: You bring order to ambiguity without slowing things down. You identify what's unclear, make it clear, and keep the program moving
• Accountable: You hold yourself and your teams to a high bar. Missed deadlines have explanations and plans — not excuses
• A Background That Proves It: There is no single path to this role. The strongest candidates have come from places where the job was to own hard outcomes under pressure — Founders, Chiefs of Staff, COOs, Delivery Managers, and operators from high-intensity environments. What matters is the pattern: you have shipped, wrangled, and delivered at scale