Agentic Systems Engineer Intern (Summer 2026)
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Job Location:
San Mateo, CA - USA
Monthly Salary:
Not Disclosed
Posted on:
7 hours ago
Vacancies:
1 Vacancy
Job Summary
Our Mission
At Phygtl we are solving the problem of student social isolation a challenge affecting 60% of todays students contributing to rising depression and anxiety.
We build technology that can reduce isolation by up to 40% by helping students form real campus connections through shared real-world moments bridging the physical and digital worlds.
Who We Are
Headquartered in San Francisco our team includes PhDs from Stanford UC Berkeley MIT and Carnegie Mellon alongside builders from Niantic Meta Magic Leap Riot Games Ubisoft and Zynga. Led by a Silicon Valley-based serial entrepreneur were united by a mission to rescue next-gen from Social Atrophy.
Our Moat
Phygtl builds systems that help students meet and build identity in real life. Vyry is a context-aware initiation engine where quests end in physical action. Retention is earned through participation not notifications.
Tasks
The Role
- Youll join the team building Vyry a mobile app that helps students meet in real life through short coordinated campus quests.
- Right now our focus is Quest Participation optimization: keeping peers on the quest screen while they coordinate via chat voice and AR Meet without state glitches drop-offs or broken realtime behavior.
- This role is not about building chatbots.
Its about shipping realtime intelligence inside a live social product where state correctness latency and user trust matter.
What Youll Work On
- Designing context-aware quest logic (physical social temporal signals)
- Detecting stall or drop-off conditions during coordination
- Suggesting structured micro-actions that increase completion probability
- Instrumenting evaluation loops tied to measurable behavioral outcomes
- Shipping production-facing components
You will operate on top of existing real-time systems not rebuild infrastructure.
Requirements
What Were Looking For
You are:
- A strong computer science or engineering student
- Someone who has shipped real systems (GitHub required)
- Comfortable reasoning about state transitions and edge cases
- Curious about AI systems beyond simple prompt usage
- Able to move from idea working prototype quickly
You should be able to:
- Design a simple state-aware workflow
- Think through failure modes
- Explain tradeoffs (latency cost reliability)
- Tie technical decisions to measurable outcomes
Bonus if youve built:
- Agentic workflows
- Multiplayer or event-driven systems
- Evaluation pipelines for AI systems
- Side projects used by real users
How We Evaluate
We prioritize:
- Systems clarity (state failure thinking)
- Execution speed
- Ownership
- Depth over pedigree
Benefits
Why Join Phygtl
Work on a Real Behavioral Problem. You wont optimize clicks. Youll design systems that influence real-world human coordination and identity formation.
This is AI applied to physical behavior not interface optimization.
Ship Systems That Matter
Your work will tie directly to:
- IRL Quest Completion Rate
- D30 Retention
You wont build experiments that disappear. Youll ship components used by live campus communities.
Learn From Operators Whove Built at Scale
Youll work with the foundering team engineers and researchers from:
- Founder DNA
- Roblox (LLM search systems)
- Niantic (AR real-world coordination)
- Stanford / Berkeley / MIT / CMU
Expect depth not hand-holding.
Operate in a High-Bar Low-Bureaucracy Environment
We value:
- Meritocracy over pedigree
- Shipped systems over slide decks
- Clear thinking over buzzwords
Ownership comes early. Responsibility scales with performance.
Build a Rare Skill Set
Youll gain experience at the intersection of:
- Agentic AI systems
- Real-time coordination
- Behavioral metrics
- Spatial computing
Few internships operate at this boundary.
Compensation & Structure
- Competitive compensation
- Flexible remote structure
- FT 3 months or PT 6 months
- High ownership small team
Apply
Send a single PDF including:
- CV
- GitHub
- A concise architecture walkthrough of one system you built
- One failure you debugged (what broke why what changed)
- A short note (300 words) on how youd increase IRL Quest Completion by 15%
We review for depth not buzzwords.
Key Skills
- Microsoft Office
- Public Relations
- Google Docs
- Data Collection
- MailChimp
- Microsoft Word
- Dermal Fillers
- Microsoft Powerpoint
- Research Experience
- Microsoft Excel
- Adobe Photoshop
- Writing Skills
About Company
Phygtl, a Silicon Valley based AI startup building tech that fosters playful, creative, human-to-human connection across the physical- digital realms.
