Software Engineer, Core Services San Francisco, United States

Retool; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 164,000 - 306,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work location

Medical, dental, vision

401(k)

Job summary

Retool is building a platform to safely ship complex internal tooling at scale. We are hiring a senior backend-focused engineer to own and evolve the core services that power our product's data and execution layers.

You will lead architecture, implement secure runtimes, and own production workloads on Kubernetes-based infrastructure (EKS). The role emphasizes security, performance, and cross-team collaboration in a hybrid work setting.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional software development experience.
• Backend systems and distributed services experience.
• Security best practices in system design.

Responsibilities

• Architect and redesign core backend services for robustness, security, and efficiency.
• Implement secure runtimes and sandboxing technologies like WASM and seccomp.
• Own production services running on Amazon EKS.

Skills

Backend development

Distributed systems

Security best practices

Performance tuning

Cloud infrastructure

Kubernetes

Helm

Terraform

Cross-team collaboration

Tools

Kubernetes

Helm

Terraform

AWS

Azure

GCP

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. 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

Retool started as a way to address obstacles with internal tools and has grown into a company that solves internal tooling for thousands of companies (big and small). We’ve done a lot with a little – we have a growing engineering team and a laundry list of features and foundational improvements we want to tackle. To continue our fast-paced growth, we need to build a world-class engineering team. You’ll help us get there by owning end-to-end projects, talking with customers, and ultimately supporting the growth of Retool—the product and the business.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

The Core Services team owns key backend services powering broad areas of the Retool product, including code execution and the infrastructure behind resource connectors that allow customers to connect Retool to their data.

IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL:

• Drive the architectural design and redesign of core Retool backend services, ensuring robustness, security, and efficiency. This includes areas such as secure sandboxing, connection pooling, and streaming.
• Use secure runtime and sandboxing technologies like WASM and seccomp filters
• Own production services running in Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

THE SKILLSET YOU'LL BRING

• You have 6+ years of experience in professional software development, ideally some of which you’ve spent in startups
• You’ve built, maintained, debugged, and scaled backend systems and distributed services
• You have a keen understanding of security best practices and experience in designing secure systems
• You can demonstrate an ability to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks in critical services
• You have experience with cloud-based infrastructure like Azure, AWS, or GCP, along with Kubernetes, Helm, and Terraform
• You have excellent communication and collaboration skills and are able to work effectively across multiple teams

BONUS POINTS

• You’re familiar with TypeScript and Node
• You’ve right-sized compute clusters, managed autoscaling groups, etc.
• You understand OS-level containerization and execution environments
• You’ve built fault-tolerant message queues, worker pools, or distributed value stores
• You’ve analyzed and tackled interesting and unusual new workloads

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 $163,800 – $306,000 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.