Director of Engineering, Core AI Experience

Retool; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 342,000 - 415,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work location

Medical, dental, vision

401(k)

Job summary

Retool is seeking a Director of Engineering to lead the Core AI Experience, guiding how users turn ideas into AI-connected apps and how they test, refine, and deploy software built with AI.

You will partner with Product and Design to ensure intuitive, reliable AI-powered tooling while managing multiple engineering teams and setting high quality standards across the platform. This hybrid role requires strong strategic and hands-on leadership.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading multiple product engineering teams.
• Strong product instincts and collaboration with Product and Design.
• Technical depth in interactive applications or developer tools.
• Experience shipping AI-powered products and managing model variability.
• Judgment to balance experimentation with durable technical investments.
• Track record turning ambiguous opportunities into clear priorities.
• Strong communication and organizational leadership.
• Ability to move between strategic and hands-on product discussions as needed.

Responsibilities

• Own engineering strategy and execution for Retool’s Core AI Experience, translating long-term vision into priorities and measurable outcomes.
• Collaborate with Product and Design to shape building, editing, debugging, and iterating software with AI.
• Partner with GTM teams on product launches, positioning, and sales strategy.
• Lead and develop engineering managers and senior tech leaders, ensuring clear ownership and collaboration.
• Set a high bar for product quality, including AI interaction reliability and usability.
• Oversee architectural decisions across UI, AI orchestration, and platform integration.
• Establish evaluation methods for AI behavior using customer feedback and product data.
• Balance rapid experimentation with solid engineering foundations to support complex use cases.
• Work with infrastructure teams to meet data access, permissions, and governance requirements.
• Stay closely connected to customers to resolve ambiguity and ship effectively.

Skills

Leadership of engineering teams

Product/design collaboration

AI-powered product experience

Technical depth in interactive apps

Experimentation vs durable investments

Prioritization under ambiguity

Clear communication & leadership

AI governance & testing

Job description

About Retool

Nearly every company in the world runs on custom software for critical operations like tracking performance metrics, handling support workflows, building admin dashboards, and countless processes you might never have thought of. But most companies don’t have the resources to properly invest in these tools, leading to a lot of old, clunky internal software, or worse, teams still stuck in manual and spreadsheet workflows.

About Retool

Nearly every company in the world runs on custom software for critical operations like tracking performance metrics, handling support workflows, building admin dashboards, and countless processes you might never have thought of. But most companies don’t have the resources to properly invest in these tools, leading to a lot of old, clunky internal software, or worse, teams still stuck in manual and spreadsheet workflows.

AI has changed who gets to build software. The definition of “developer” now includes analysts, operators, and domain experts creating solutions directly—and the tools they reach for are multiplying by the week. That’s both an opportunity and a challenge: as more people build with more AI tools, the risk of shipping ungoverned software into production grows just as fast.

At Retool, we’re building the platform that makes all of it safe to ship. Build with any AI tool you want, then deploy into one place that connects to your real business data, enforces enterprise policies automatically, and lets teams create once and reuse everywhere with shared, trusted components. The cost of building software has collapsed. The cost of governing it hasn’t—and that’s the problem we solve.

Developers and domain experts have already automated over 100 million hours of work on our platform, freeing them to focus on creative problem-solving and strategic work that drives real business value. The people closest to the problem can now build the software to solve it, safely, and within enterprise guardrails.

Let’s build the future together.

Why We’re Looking For You

We’re looking for a Director of Engineering to lead Retool’s Core AI Experience—the product experiences that help people turn business problems into working software with AI. You’ll shape how users go from an idea to an app or agent connected to real data, and how they test, refine, and confidently put what they build into use.

Building with AI changes what users expect from Retool. Getting to a first version should feel quick, but the experience also needs to hold up as requirements become more complex. Users need to understand what AI has built, guide its decisions, and move fluidly between generating software and editing it directly. Your teams will make those interactions intuitive, reliable, and useful for real business work.

This role sits at the intersection of product engineering, developer experience, and applied AI. You’ll partner closely with Product and Design to define the core experience, make technical investments that improve quality and speed, and build teams that learn quickly from customers. We’re looking for someone with strong product judgment, technical depth, and the ability to turn an ambitious direction into focused execution.

What You’ll Do

• Own engineering strategy and execution for Retool’s Core AI Experience, connecting the longer-term product vision to clear priorities and measurable customer outcomes.
• Partner with Product and Design to shape how users build, edit, debug, and iterate on software with AI—from their first interaction through ongoing use.
• Partnership and collaboration with GTM teams on product launches, positioning, and sales strategy.
• Lead and develop engineering managers and senior technical leaders, building clear ownership and strong collaboration across teams.
• Set a high bar for product quality, including the reliability, responsiveness, and usability of AI interactions.
• Guide architectural decisions across the user experience, application state, AI orchestration, and connections to the broader Retool platform.
• Build effective ways to evaluate AI behavior, combining customer feedback, product data, and systematic evaluations to understand whether changes improve the experience.
• Help teams balance rapid experimentation with the engineering foundations needed to support increasingly complex customer use cases.
• Work closely with platform and infrastructure partners to ensure the core experience works within enterprise requirements for data access, permissions, and governance.
• Stay close to customers and the work, helping teams resolve ambiguity, make tradeoffs, and ship.

The Skillset You’ll Bring

• Experience leading multiple product engineering teams, with a track record of developing managers and senior engineers.
• Strong product instincts and experience partnering deeply with Product and Design to deliver intuitive, technically complex software.
• Technical depth in interactive applications, developer tools, or similarly complex products where frontend experience and underlying systems are closely connected.
• Experience shipping AI-powered products and understanding the challenges of model variability, latency, evaluation, and user trust.
• The judgment to distinguish where experimentation will help a team learn and where a more durable technical investment is needed.
• A track record of turning ambiguous opportunities into clear priorities, helping teams make progress as requirements evolve.
• Strong communication and organizational leadership: you create alignment, surface risks early, and make decisions understandable.
• A practical, involved leadership style. You can move between organizational strategy, technical reviews, and detailed product discussions as the work requires.
• Experience with AI-assisted software creation, developer workflows, or enterprise software is especially relevant.

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 $342,000 – $415,000 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.