Software Engineer, AI Product Engineer at Retool – San Francisco, California

ABOUT RETOOLNearly every company in the world runs on custom software for critical operations like tracking performance metrics, handling customer support workflows, building admin dashboards, and countless other processes you might not have even thought of. But most companies don't have adequate resources to properly invest in these tools, leading to a lot of old and clunky internal software or, even worse, users still stuck in manual and spreadsheet flows.
At Retool, we’re building the first enterprise AppGen platform: software that transforms natural language into production-ready code, integrates directly with business data, and meets the highest standards of security and governance. AI is redefining what it means to build software—and who gets to build it. The definition of “developer” now includes analysts, operators, and domain experts creating solutions directly. As the pool of builders widens, so does the complexity of what they need to build. The opportunity is enormous, but so is the challenge of enabling this larger community to build production-grade software safely. That means AI that understands real business data, enforces enterprise policies automatically, and empowers teams to create once and reuse everywhere with shared, trusted components.
Over 100 million hours of work has been automated by developers and domain experts using our platform, freeing them to focus on creative problem-solving and strategic initiatives that drive real business value. The people closest to knowing what needs to be built can now safely create custom solutions within enterprise guardrails. And that's a mission worth striving for.
Let's build the future together!
WHY WE'RE LOOKING FOR YOURetool started by addressing obstacles with internal tools and has grown into a company that solves internal tooling for thousands of companies (big and small). Now, with AI-native capabilities, we’re going a step further: transforming how humans interact with software entirely.We’re hiring AI Product Engineers to help us push the boundaries of what’s possible with LLMs in the hands of developers. If you’re passionate about building productized AI experiences—fast, reliable, and deeply usable—we want to talk.
WHAT YOU'LL DOAs an AI Product Engineer, you’ll work across product and infrastructure layers to ship developer-facing AI features that feel like magic—intelligent, fast, and deeply embedded into the act of building software. You might:

• Build generative UIs that let users create real apps from natural language
• Improve the performance, observability, and safety of our internal model architecture
• Extend our AI evaluation systems to support smarter ranking, feedback loops, and product metrics
• Develop patterns for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), few-shot prompting, and agentic architecture.
• Contribute to building internal tools that help us accelerate iteration on AI features and workflows

You’ll work in a TypeScript + Node.js + React stack, but we value strong engineering fundamentals over specific frameworks. You should be comfortable navigating the full stack, even if you lean more frontend or backend.
THE SKILLSET YOU'LL BRING

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience
• A track record of building and shipping real product—not just models or papers
• Experience working with LLMs and modern techniques (RAG, CoT, few-shot, embeddings, etc.)
• An eye for product: you care how features work and how they feel
• Familiarity with vector databases, prompt orchestration tools, and evaluation techniques
• A pragmatic mindset about what’s scalable and maintainable in production
• Strong opinions, weakly held—you move quickly but bring others along
• Bonus: experience building AI features for developer tools or productivity software
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WHO YOU'LL WORK WITHYou’ll join a small, fast-moving AI team inside Retool, working alongside engineers, designers, and PMs who’ve built everything from visual programming systems to compiler infrastructure. You’ll also collaborate with our core product and infra teams as we deepen AI’s role across the platform.We value ownership, speed, and a tight feedback loop with our customers (many of whom are developers themselves). This is a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of AI, developer experience, and product design—with real users, real use cases, and real impact.
NICE TO HAVE

• Experience in JavaScript / TypeScript
• Experience with PostgreSQL
• Exposure to MLOps techniques (e.g., fine-tuning pipelines, model hosting)
• Experience mentoring other engineers or working closely with design

READY TO BUILD THE FUTURE OF SOFTWARE?If you’re excited to shape how developers build with AI—from prompts to production—we’d love to meet you.
For candidates based in the United States, the pay range(s) for this role is listed below and represents base salary range for non-commissionable roles or on-target earnings (OTE) for commissionable roles. This salary range may be inclusive of several career levels at Retool and will be narrowed during the interview process based on a number of factors such as (but not limited to), scope and responsibilities, the candidate’s experience and qualifications, and location. Additional compensation in the form(s) of equity and/or commission are dependent on the position offered. Retool provides a comprehensive benefit plan, including medical, dental, vision, and 401(k). Pay and benefits are subject to change at any time, consistent with the terms of any applicable compensation or benefit plans.
The base pay range for this role is $163,800 – $306,000 per year.
Retool offers generous benefits to all employees and hybrid work location. For more information, please visit the benefits and perks section of our careers page!
Retool is currently set up to employ all roles in the US and specific roles in the UK. To find roles that can be employed in the UK, please refer to our careers page and review the indicated locations.