---
title: 'UX Research Manager at Retool'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ux-research-manager-retool-san-francisco-fsj427an79p5'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# UX Research Manager at Retool

- **Company:** Retool
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $194k–$260k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-08-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/retool/am9icG9zdDqpN76c-U8seAk_DVqZ_1d8

## Job description

## WHY WE’RE LOOKING FOR YOU:

We’re looking for a Senior UX Researcher to inform our product and design strategy, we’re reimagining how software gets built in the era of AI, and your research will light the way.

You’ll be a foundational member leading a small, strategic research team, with an opportunity to shape the culture of research at Retool, and define how insights drive impact across the organization. Though a new function, research is already deeply valued across the organization, informing key strategic designs and guiding our expansion into new customer segments and AI-powered experiences. You’ll collaborate with a curious and customer-centric group of designers, engineers, and product managers who are eager to partner with research to uncover new opportunities to elevate our products.

## WHAT YOU'LL DO:

In this role, you’ll own research initiatives to inform product strategy and design, collaborating closely with cross-functional teams to deliver insights that shape Retool’s future. You will:

- Work with stakeholders to identify knowledge gaps, latent assumptions, and open questions to prioritize opportunities for impactful research.
- Plan, conduct, and analyze studies leveraging a range of qualitative and quantitative methods—from tactical usability tests, to in-depth interviews, in-product surveys, and more—to generate actionable learnings.
- Balance speed with research rigor, creatively leveraging research methods to work within constraints.
- Triangulate insights from across user research, product usage, support, and market signals, to surface meaningful patterns.
- Distill complex data into clear, compelling stories for teams across the org, from product, design, and engineering peers to executive stakeholders.

As an early member of the research team, you’ll also collaborate with your teammates to shape our research practice, evolve our processes, and help embed user-centered thinking across everything we do.

## THE SKILLSET YOU'LL BRING:

- 5+ years of experience in UX research, product research, or a related field, ideally in Enterprise Saas or technical platform environments
- Proven ability to own research projects end-to-end, from scoping through to execution and analysis, leveraging a range of qualitative and quantitative methods
- Strong synthesis and storytelling skills, with an ability to distill ambiguity into clarity and make insights resonate with diverse audiences
- Experience shaping product direction through early-stage generative research and iterative usability testing
- Comfort working in ambiguous problem spaces and a bias toward action—you're as strategic as you are scrappy
- Deep curiosity about how complex systems work, especially technical workflows or developer tools
- Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with an understanding for how to bring others into the process and rally teams around user insights
- Ability to manage multiple priorities, scope projects appropriately, and deliver high-quality work on time

Additional nice-to-haves:

- Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, Human Factors, Computer Science, or similar field
- Experience working on AI products, along with an understanding of how these technologies work and implications for how users interact with them
- Familiarity with design thinking frameworks, usability evaluation techniques, and A/B testing
- Interest and excitement in leading and growing our small UXR 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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