---
title: 'Software Engineer, Automations at Retool'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-automations-retool-san-francisco-c5mkacjvq8zh'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-17'
---

# Software Engineer, Automations at Retool

- **Company:** Retool
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $164k–$306k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-09-16
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-17
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/retool/am9icG9zdDpQBi6gVfxN92UT_O6GtjQs

## Job description

## WHAT YOU'LL DO

We're looking for a Software Engineer to help build the next generation of automation at Retool. You'll work on the systems powering Retool Workflows and Agents, helping customers automate business processes, orchestrate complex workflows, and build AI-powered applications that integrate across their technology stack.

This is a highly technical, product-minded engineering role. You'll partner closely with product and design to shape an emerging area of the platform, translating ambiguous problems into scalable systems and intuitive developer experiences. From orchestration engines and execution infrastructure to AI integrations and developer tooling, you'll help define how automation is built at Retool.

You'll own projects end-to-end—from technical design through implementation, launch, and iteration—while helping establish the architecture that will support this product area as it scales.

## WHO YOU'LL WORK WITH

You'll join the Automations team, partnering closely with Product, Design, and GTM to build one of Retool's fastest-growing product areas. The team is focused on extending Retool beyond internal applications into backend automation and AI agents, enabling customers to orchestrate mission-critical workflows across their businesses.

We're a collaborative team that enjoys solving difficult technical problems, shipping quickly, and working directly with customers to understand how they're building. You'll have significant ownership and influence over both the technical direction of the platform and the customer experience.

## IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL

- Design and build the systems powering Retool Workflows and Agents.
- Build scalable systems that enable customers to orchestrate complex workflows, automate business processes, and leverage AI throughout their applications.
- Partner closely with product and design to turn ambiguous product ideas into thoughtful technical solutions.
- Own projects end-to-end—from architecture and implementation to rollout, monitoring, and iteration.
- Work across the stack to improve the developer experience, platform reliability, and execution performance of automation workloads.
- Collaborate directly with customers to understand their automation challenges and build solutions that solve real-world problems.
- Help shape the technical direction of an emerging product area through architecture discussions, technical decision-making, and code reviews.
- Contribute to growing the engineering team through interviewing and mentoring.

## THE SKILLSET YOU'LL BRING

- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, ideally including time at a high-growth startup.
- Experience building and owning complex, distributed systems or developer platforms.
- Strong full-stack engineering experience, with comfort working across backend services, APIs, and frontend user experiences.
- Experience designing scalable backend systems and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
- Ability to navigate ambiguous technical problems and make thoughtful architectural tradeoffs.
- Strong product intuition and a customer-first mindset—you enjoy understanding how people use what you build.
- Excellent collaboration skills and experience partnering closely with product and design.
- A bias toward ownership, iteration, and shipping high-quality software.

## NICE TO HAVE

- Experience with JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js, and React.
- Experience building workflow orchestration, distributed execution systems, or event-driven architectures.
- Experience working with AI infrastructure, LLMs, agents, or developer tools.
- Experience with PostgreSQL or other relational databases.
- Experience mentoring engineers and helping shape technical direction across a team.

## About Retool

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Retool provides a platform for building, deploying, and managing custom internal software and AI applications by connecting to any database, API, or LLM.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2017
- **Founders**: David Hsu (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Software Development, Enterprise Internal Tools, AI Application Platform
- **Target customers**: B2B, Enterprise, SMB; specifically developers, IT teams, and business operators building internal software
- **Mission or purpose**: To enable companies to build production-ready internal software and AI applications dramatically faster, with enterprise-grade security and governance, so that domain experts and developers alike can solve critical business problems.

## Products & Services
- **Retool App Builder**: A low-code platform to build custom internal apps (dashboards, admin panels, CRUD tools) by connecting to databases and APIs. Type: SaaS/Platform.
- **Retool Workflows**: A visual automation tool to build and orchestrate complex business processes and backend logic. Type: SaaS/Platform.
- **Retool AI**: An AI-powered app generation capability that transforms natural language into production-ready applications, agents, and workflows, integrating with any LLM. Type: AI Feature/Platform.
- **Retool Mobile**: A solution to build and deploy internal mobile apps from the same Retool platform. Type: SaaS/Platform.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (last round was Series C).
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue of $5 million (as per LinkedIn company data); Total Funding of $141.3 million.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Sequoia Capital (lead), Nat Friedman, John Collison, Daniel Gross. Customers include Amazon, Stripe, Brex, and Orangetheory Fitness.
- **Growth Signals**: Over 10,000 organizations use Retool. The company has automated over 100 million hours of work. It has 6 offices across the US and UK. Despite a recent headcount reduction (-11% YoY), it maintains a strong brand in the enterprise internal tools space and is aggressively pivoting into AI-powered app generation.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Enterprise Governance from Day One**: Unlike point solutions, apps built in Retool are production-ready and pass security reviews, eliminating the need for rebuilds or audit scrambles.
- **Deep Data Connectivity**: Securely connects to existing databases, APIs, and internal systems, ensuring apps run on real data with real permissions.
- **Unified Platform**: One platform to manage, orchestrate, and scale all internal apps, agents, and workflows, providing centralized visibility and governance for IT.
- **Trusted by Large Enterprises**: A strong customer base of high-profile companies (Amazon, Stripe, Brex) serves as a powerful validation of its enterprise readiness.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI as the Core Platform**: Retool is positioning itself as the "first enterprise AppGen platform," where AI is used to generate production-ready code from natural language, expanding the definition of "developer" to include analysts and operators.
- **Scaling Enterprise Features**: The company is focused on building out governance, security, and platform capabilities to support large-scale deployments across complex organizations.
- **International Expansion**: With offices in London and a German-speaking Sales Engineer role, Retool is actively expanding its presence in the European market.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: The company values ambition, intense curiosity, energy, and deep care. They emphasize moving fast, acting like an owner, and being both demanding and supportive.
- **Work Environment**: Hybrid model with offices in San Francisco, New York, Salt Lake City, and London. The company believes great work happens when teams collaborate in person.
- **Product Impact**: Employees are close to the product and use Retool internally, giving them a direct voice in improving it. The mission is to enable a wider community of builders to create production-grade software safely.
- **Hiring Process**: Structured, with initial recruiter/hiring manager chats, a technical evaluation or practical exercise, and a final round of 3–5 interviews. The company aims for transparency and candidate preparation.
- **Employee Sentiment**: Employer rating of 3.4/5.0 (127 reviews). Strengths include Work-Life Balance (4.1) and Culture (3.7). Compensation (3.4) and Career (3.4) are areas for potential improvement.

## Sources
1. [retool.com](https://retool.com/)
2. [retool.com/careers](https://retool.com/careers)
3. [retool.com/about](https://retool.com/about)
4. [linkedin.com/company/tryretool](https://www.linkedin.com/company/tryretool)
5. [jobs.gem.com/retool](https://jobs.gem.com/retool)

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