---
title: 'Software Engineer, Founders Initiatives at Retell AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-founders-initiatives-retell-ai-san-francisco-8sewv9trst06'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Software Engineer, Founders Initiatives at Retell AI

- **Company:** Retell AI
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $160k–$270k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-08-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/retell-ai/46400d61-feca-45f9-9000-563b8994f60f

## 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)

Retell AI transforms customer experience with voice AI for enterprises, including customers like CVS/Aetna, American Airlines, Lenovo, and Grab. We have more customer stories than we can tell!

## ABOUT FOUNDERS INITIATIVES

Founders Initiatives is a cross-functional team that works directly with Retell's founders on the company's highest priority opportunities and challenges. Team members are expected to operate across functions, build from first principles, and help scale the business in whatever way creates the most impact. This is not a narrowly scoped role, it is a high ownership builder position where you will work across product, engineering, GTM, operations, and AI systems to design and ship core company infrastructure.

## ABOUT THE ROLE

We are hiring a Software Engineer, Founders Initiatives to design and build internal and external AI systems that power how Retell hires, sells, operates, and scales. You'll build production-grade AI workflows, automations, and agent systems that have a direct impact on company operations and customer experience. This role sits at the intersection of applied AI, full-stack engineering, and startup operations. We're open to exceptional new graduates (0–1 years of experience) who have demonstrated strong engineering ability through internships, research, personal projects, or startup experience. One of the unique parts of this role is that there isn't a single path after you join. As you grow, you'll naturally gravitate toward one of two directions:

- Customer-facing: Work directly with enterprise customers, help design AI solutions, build integrations, and become a trusted technical advisor.
- Internal engineering: Focus on building AI systems, internal tooling, automations, and infrastructure that help Retell scale.

Most engineers will touch both early on, but over time you'll have the opportunity to lean into the path that best fits your strengths and interests.

## KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

HR & Recruiting AI Systems

- Build systems that extract structured signals from resumes (skills, experience, founder traits, domain expertise)
- Develop lead scoring models to predict interview success and role fit
- Design AI recruiter workflows for candidate screening and qualification
- Automate personalized outbound email and candidate engagement workflows

Security & Compliance Automation

- Build automation systems for customer security workflows (BAAs, DPAs, DocuSign, contract review flows)
- Automate security questionnaire and compliance response generation
- Improve internal tooling for enterprise readiness and audit processes

Operational Infrastructure Tools

- Build systems for accounts receivable automation and finance-related email workflows
- Create automated enterprise customer onboarding and account setup tools
- Design internal systems that reduce manual operational overhead across teams

3rd-Party Integrations & Platform Work

- Integrate with CRM systems such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and GoHighLevel
- Build workflow automation using tools like Zapier, n8n, and Make
- Design LLM-powered systems using OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, and other models
- Own API-based integrations that connect internal systems across the company

GTM Engineering & Growth Automation

- Build HubSpot and Lark automations to improve sales and marketing efficiency
- Develop lifecycle automation systems for customer engagement and retention
- Create targeted website personalization and ad content generation systems
- Build email personalization and outbound automation pipelines at scale

## YOU MIGHT THRIVE IF YOU

- Have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a closely related technical field.
- Are a new graduate or have up to 1 year of professional software engineering experience.
- Have completed strong internships, research, startup work, or meaningful side projects that demonstrate exceptional engineering ability.
- Think like a founder and take ownership from day one.
- Have strong software engineering fundamentals (backend, full-stack, or systems).
- Have hands-on experience building with LLMs, AI agents, or modern AI tooling through internships, research, or personal projects.
- Are excited to work across product, engineering, and operations.
- Move quickly, learn fast, and thrive in ambiguous environments.
- Prefer building end-to-end systems over working on narrowly defined tasks.
- Care deeply about solving real customer problems and shipping impactful products.

## JOB DETAILS

- Cash: 160k - 270k
- Equity: Offers Meaningful Equity
- Location: Redwood City, CA, US - relocation provided
- US Visas: Retell AI is open to sponsoring work authorization for qualified candidates, including H-1B, TN, L-1, E-3, F-1 (OPT/CPT), and O-1 visas.

## OTHER BENEFITS

- 100% coverage for medical, dental, and vision insurance
- $70/day DoorDash credit for unlimited breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks
- $200/month wellness reimbursement (gym, fitness classes, etc.)
- $300/month commuter reimbursement (gas, Caltrain, etc.)
- $75/month phone bill reimbursement
- $50/month internet reimbursement

## COMPENSATION PHILOSOPHY

- Best Offer Upfront: Choose from three cash-equity balance options; no negotiation needed.
- Top 1% Talent: Above-market pay (top 5 percentile) to attract exceptional builders.
- High Ownership: Small teams, >$1M revenue/employee, and significant equity.
- Performance-Based: Offers tied to interview performance, not experience or past salaries.

## INTERVIEW PROCESS

- Intro Call (15-20min): Connect with our talent team to get a deeper look at the team and the work you'd be doing.
- First Technical Phone Interview (45 min): System Design & Project Deep Dive
- Second Tech Screen (45min): Tools & Automation
- Final Interview
- Coding and Technical Round (90 min)
- Cross-Functional Interview (30 min)
- Past Project Deep Dive (30 min)

## 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

- [Forward Deployed Engineer, Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-intern-retell-ai-san-francisco-sdkx41we6vgb) — San Francisco, CA
- [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
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