Senior Software Engineer, Internal Deployed
Retell AI is hiring a Senior Software Engineer, Internal Deployed. It pays $180k-$300k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Level.
AI in this role
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
#3 Fastest-Growing Software Company, G2 Best Software Awards 2026
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 an Software Engineer, Internal Deployed to build the AI systems and automations that power how Retell operates internally. You'll work directly with our founders and teams to streamline recruiting, sales, finance, operations, and customer support through AI.
You'll design and deploy production-grade AI workflows, internal tools, and agent systems that improve efficiency across the company. This role combines applied AI, software engineering, automation, and business 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. If you enjoy solving real business problems with AI and want to build systems that have an immediate company-wide impact, we'd love to hear from you.
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 with 2 years of software development experience, excluding internships.
Have strong software engineering fundamentals (backend, full-stack, or systems).
Have demonstrated exceptional engineering ability through internships, startup experience, research, or meaningful side projects.
Experience with LLMs, AI agents, or modern AI tooling is a strong plus.
Think like a founder and take ownership from day one.
Enjoy solving business and operational problems with technology.
Are excited to work across engineering, product, recruiting, sales, and operations to build tools that improve how the company operates.
Move quickly, learn fast, and thrive in ambiguous, fast-paced environments.
Prefer building end-to-end systems over narrowly defined tasks.
Care deeply about shipping impactful products that solve real problems.
Exceptional new graduates and engineers with up to 1 year of experience are encouraged to apply.
JOB DETAILS
Cash: 180k - 300k
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)
How we rate this
Senior Software Engineer, Internal Deployed at Retell AI rates 67 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Open the description and count.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in software engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $180k
- Typical software engineer job
- $168k
This posting starts 7% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- What have you built with speech recognition or text-to-speech, and where did it break?
- What are the limits of OpenAI that you've run into, and how did you work around them?
- What's a project where you used Claude hands-on?
- Walk me through how you've used Gemini in your day-to-day work.
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Speech, OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.
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