Agentic Systems Engineer Intern (Summer 2026)

Our Mission At Phygtl, we are solving the problem of student social isolation — a challenge affecting 60%+ of today’s 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, we’re 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. The Role You’ll 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.” It’s about shipping realtime intelligence inside a live social product, where state correctness, latency, and user trust matter. What You’ll Work On Designing context-aware quest logic (physical + s