---
title: 'Forward Deployed Engineer, Intern at Retell AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-intern-retell-ai-san-francisco-sdkx41we6vgb'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Forward Deployed Engineer, Intern at Retell AI

- **Company:** Retell AI
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-09-08
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/retell-ai/9515b331-91af-401b-a6dd-569ef40c5b48

## Job description

## ABOUT RETELL AI

Retell AI is using first-principles thinking to reimagine the call center with cutting-edge voice AI. Thousands of companies now use Retell's AI voice agents to handle sales, support, and logistics calls that once required large teams of human agents. Backed by Y Combinator, Alt Capital, and other leading investors, we've scaled to $80M in ARR with a team of 50, up from $5M at the start of 2025, and are now valued at over $1.5B. Our vision for 2026 is to build a modern CX platform where entire contact centers are powered by AI. Instead of basic automation that needs constant human tuning, we're creating intelligent AI “workers” that act as frontline agents, QA analysts, and managers, continuously executing, monitoring, and improving every customer interaction. We're growing fast and looking for ambitious builders who want to tackle hard technical problems, move quickly, and have a real impact on one of the fastest-growing voice AI companies in the world. Let's build the future together.

Recent recognition:

- [No. 1 Best Places to Work in the Bay Area, San Francisco Business Times 2026](https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/voice-ai-startup-retell-ai-145200025.html)
- https://a16z.com/the-ai-application-spending-report-where-startup-dollars-really-go/
- [#3 Fastest-Growing Software Company, G2 Best Software Awards 2026](https://company.g2.com/news/g2s-2026-best-software-awards)
- [Best Agentic AI Software, G2 Best Software Awards 2026](https://www.retellai.com/blog/retell-ai-recognized-as-the-best-agentic-ai-software-by-g2)
- [#4 Fastest-Growing Software Vendor, Brex Benchmark 2025](https://www.brex.com/journal/brex-benchmark-december-2025)
- [Enterprise Tech 30 Class of 2026, Nasdaq & Wing VC](https://www.nasdaq.com/videos/retell-ai)
- [Top-Ranked Startup, Lean AI Leaderboard](https://leanaileaderboard.com/)
- [Backed by Y Combinator](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/retell-ai)

## ABOUT THE ROLE

We’re looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer Intern to work directly with our customers and engineering team. You’ll sit at the intersection of engineering and customers. You’ll help build, test, and deploy AI voice solutions for real-world use cases, troubleshoot technical issues, and work closely with customers to make sure what we build actually works in production. This isn’t a typical internship where you’re working on a side project. You’ll work on real customer deployments, ship code, and see the impact of your work quickly. You’ll also work closely with our engineering team to bring what we learn from customers back into the product.

## KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

- Build & Deploy: Build and deploy technical solutions for real customer use cases.
- Work with Customers: Join customer calls, understand their problems, and help turn those problems into technical solutions.
- Solve Problems: Debug issues across APIs, integrations, data, and AI systems.
- Ship Quickly: Write code, test solutions, and get them into production.
- Improve the Product: Identify patterns across deployments and work with engineering to turn them into product improvements.
- Own Projects: Take projects from an initial customer problem through deployment and iteration.

## YOU MIGHT THRIVE IF

- You’re pursuing a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
- You enjoy building things and figuring out how they work.
- You have experience programming in Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, or a similar language.
- You’re comfortable working through ambiguous technical problems.
- You’re interested in AI and want to work on systems that are actually being used by customers.
- You communicate clearly and enjoy working directly with people.
- You move quickly and take ownership without needing everything spelled out.
- You’ve built projects, shipped software, or worked on something outside of school that you’re excited to talk about.

## JOB DETAILS

- Employment Type: Internship
- Location: San Francisco Bay Area - Redwood City
- Work Arrangement: In-office
- Compensation: Competitive internship compensation

## About Retell AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Retell AI is a real-time conversational AI platform that builds human-like, low-latency voice agents to automate phone calls for businesses.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage, Y Combinator-backed)
- **Headquarters**: San Carlos, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Bing Wu (CEO), Todd Li (COO), Evie Wang (CTO), Weijia Yu (President), Zexia Zhang (CMO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Contact Center Automation, AI Voice Agents, Conversational AI, Enterprise Communication Software
- **Target customers**: B2B (enterprise, healthcare, insurance, automotive, SMBs)
- **Mission**: "A world where every business call is handled by AI that actually gets it right."

## Products & Services
- **AI Voice Agent Platform (SaaS)**: Drag-and-drop agentic framework to build, deploy, and manage AI voice agents for inbound (support, routing, appointment booking) and outbound (reminders, lead qualification, surveys) calls. Includes:
  - Real-time function calling (book, pay, update records, transfer)
  - Proprietary turn-taking model and ultra-realistic voices
  - Streaming RAG with auto-sync knowledge base
  - Performance analytics dashboard
  - Batch calling with conversion tracking
  - SIP trunking (connect to any telephony)
  - Enterprise on-prem deployment option
  - Compliance: HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, GDPR; SSO; PII redaction; role-based access

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: $40M annualized revenue (fully profitable as of 2025)
- **Total Funding**: $9.4M (including $4.6M seed round led by Alt Capital, backed by Y Combinator and angel investors)
- **Headcount**: ~69 employees (175% YoY growth)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Alt Capital (lead seed), Y Combinator

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proprietary Voice AI Orchestration**: Built from the ground up for sub-second latency (~600ms) and natural turn-taking, not stitched-off APIs.
- **Scalability**: Battle-tested infrastructure handling millions of calls reliably.
- **Enterprise Security**: HIPAA/SOC2/GDPR certified, on-prem deployment, SSO, redaction.
- **High Capital Efficiency**: $40M ARR with only 25 employees at time of reaching that milestone.

## Strategic Focus
- Replace traditional call centers by shifting from human-staffed support to AI-handled routine calls, with human escalation for complex cases.
- Continue improving low-latency, agentic voice models and expanding enterprise feature set (batch calling, analytics, compliance).
- Scale customer base across healthcare, insurance, and other regulated verticals.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Small, high-ownership teams; >$1M revenue per employee; "ship fast" — no committees, ship this week if you can make the case.
- **Work Environment**: In-office in San Carlos (on purpose — speed and collaboration on hard problems).
- **Benefits**: Competitive equity packages, health/dental/vision insurance, meal stipends, relocation support, visa sponsorship (H-1B and other work visas).
- **Tech Stack**: Backend in TypeScript and Python, ML in Python, Frontend in React.
- **Interview Process**: Conversations with co-founders, deep on product thinking and technical ability, transparent and fast.

## Sources
1. [retellai.com](https://www.retellai.com/)
2. [retellai.com/about-us](https://www.retellai.com/about-us)
3. [retellai.com/careers](https://www.retellai.com/careers)
4. [linkedin.com/company/retellai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/retellai)
5. [cbinsights.com/company/retell-ai](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/retell-ai)

## Other roles at Retell AI

- [Founding Strategic Partnerships, Cloud & Alliances](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-strategic-partnerships-cloud-alliances-retell-ai-san-francisco-teynheaq1qm7) — San Francisco, CA
- [Compliance Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/compliance-engineer-retell-ai-san-francisco-3mdsygdph1ys) — San Francisco, CA
- [SEO Strategist/Growth SEO Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/seo-strategist-growth-seo-lead-retell-ai-san-francisco-bm5es33g3pmt) — San Francisco, CA
- [Applied AI Engineer (Customer Facing)](https://feeny.ai/job/applied-ai-engineer-customer-facing-retell-ai-san-francisco-m97dr8dazek5) — San Francisco, CA
- [Forward Deployed Engineer, New Grad](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-new-grad-retell-ai-san-francisco-y4awhc8578g4) — San Francisco, CA
- [Telephony Engineer - Remote](https://feeny.ai/job/telephony-engineer-remote-retell-ai-remote-7h5qb6e177t6)
- [Deployment Consultant - Singapore](https://feeny.ai/job/deployment-consultant-singapore-retell-ai-singapore-1m6as0mb6d7d) — Singapore
- [Deployment Consultant - Hong Kong](https://feeny.ai/job/deployment-consultant-hong-kong-retell-ai-hong-kong-jqwdzaew9dbw) — Hong Kong, China
- [Senior Strategic Deployment Manager - Singapore](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-strategic-deployment-manager-singapore-retell-ai-singapore-9659k4wx70ht) — Singapore
- [Senior Strategic Deployment Manager - Hong Kong](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-strategic-deployment-manager-hong-kong-retell-ai-hong-kong-ttma82x7gvnd) — Hong Kong, China