Software Engineer, AI Product Engineer

$163K - $306K San Francisco, CA, US Mid Level AI Software Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

EmbeddingsJavascriptRagTypescript

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

ABOUT RETOOL

Nearly every company in the world runs on custom software for critical operations like tracking performance metrics, handling customer support workflows, building admin dashboards, and countless other processes you might not have even thought of. But most companies don't have adequate resources to properly invest in these tools, leading to a lot of old and clunky internal software or, even worse, users still stuck in manual and spreadsheet flows.

At Retool, we’re building the first enterprise AppGen platform: software that transforms natural language into production\-ready code, integrates directly with business data, and meets the highest standards of security and governance. AI is redefining what it means to build software—and who gets to build it. The definition of “developer” now includes analysts, operators, and domain experts creating solutions directly. As the pool of builders widens, so does the complexity of what they need to build. The opportunity is enormous, but so is the challenge of enabling this larger community to build production\-grade software safely. That means AI that understands real business data, enforces enterprise policies automatically, and empowers teams to create once and reuse everywhere with shared, trusted components.

Over 100 million hours of work has been automated by developers and domain experts using our platform, freeing them to focus on creative problem\-solving and strategic initiatives that drive real business value. The people closest to knowing what needs to be built can now safely create custom solutions within enterprise guardrails. And that's a mission worth striving for.

Let's build the future together!

WHY WE'RE LOOKING FOR YOU

Retool started by addressing obstacles with internal tools and has grown into a company that solves internal tooling for thousands of companies (big and small). Now, with AI\-native capabilities, we’re going a step further: transforming how humans interact with software entirely.

We’re hiring AI Product Engineers to help us push the boundaries of what’s possible with LLMs in the hands of developers. If you’re passionate about building productized AI experiences—fast, reliable, and deeply usable—we want to talk.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

As an AI Product Engineer, you’ll work across product and infrastructure layers to ship developer\-facing AI features that feel like magic—intelligent, fast, and deeply embedded into the act of building software. You might:

  • Build generative UIs that let users create real apps from natural language
  • Improve the performance, observability, and safety of our internal model architecture
  • Extend our AI evaluation systems to support smarter ranking, feedback loops, and product metrics
  • Develop patterns for retrieval\-augmented generation (RAG), few\-shot prompting, and agentic architecture.
  • Contribute to building internal tools that help us accelerate iteration on AI features and workflows

You’ll work in a TypeScript \+ Node.js \+ React stack, but we value strong engineering fundamentals over specific frameworks. You should be comfortable navigating the full stack, even if you lean more frontend or backend.

THE SKILLSET YOU'LL BRING

  • 3\+ years of professional software engineering experience
  • A track record of building and shipping real product—not just models or papers
  • Experience working with LLMs and modern techniques (RAG, CoT, few\-shot, embeddings, etc.)
  • An eye for product: you care how features work *and* how they feel
  • Familiarity with vector databases, prompt orchestration tools, and evaluation techniques
  • A pragmatic mindset about what’s scalable and maintainable in production
  • Strong opinions, weakly held—you move quickly but bring others along
  • Bonus: experience building AI features for developer tools or productivity software

WHO YOU'LL WORK WITH

You’ll join a small, fast\-moving AI team inside Retool, working alongside engineers, designers, and PMs who’ve built everything from visual programming systems to compiler infrastructure. You’ll also collaborate with our core product and infra teams as we deepen AI’s role across the platform.

We value ownership, speed, and a tight feedback loop with our customers (many of whom are developers themselves). This is a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of AI, developer experience, and product design—with real users, real use cases, and real impact.

NICE TO HAVE

  • Experience in JavaScript / TypeScript
  • Experience with PostgreSQL
  • Exposure to MLOps techniques (e.g., fine\-tuning pipelines, model hosting)
  • Experience mentoring other engineers or working closely with design

READY TO BUILD THE FUTURE OF SOFTWARE?

If you’re excited to shape how developers build with AI—from prompts to production—we’d love to meet you.

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.

Salary Context

This $163K-$306K range is above the 75th percentile for AI Software Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $183K across 194 roles with salary data).

Role Details

Company Retool
Title Software Engineer, AI Product Engineer
Location San Francisco, CA, US
Category AI Software Engineer
Experience Mid Level
Salary $163K - $306K
Remote No

About This Role

AI Software Engineers build the applications and systems that AI models run inside. They own the API layers, data pipelines, frontend integrations, and infrastructure that turn a model into a product users interact with. Every AI company needs engineers who can build the software around the AI.

The challenge is building reliable systems around inherently unreliable components. Models are probabilistic. They'll give different answers to the same question. They hallucinate. They're slow. They're expensive. Your job is to build an application layer that handles all of this gracefully while delivering a product that users trust and enjoy.

Across the 3,708 AI roles we're tracking, AI Software Engineer positions make up 7% of the market. At Retool, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.

AI Software Engineer roles are among the most numerous in the AI job market. Every company deploying AI needs software engineers who understand AI integration patterns. The demand is broad, spanning startups to enterprises, across every industry adopting AI capabilities.

What the Work Looks Like

A typical week includes: building API endpoints that serve model inference with caching and fallback logic, designing the data pipeline that feeds context to a RAG system, implementing streaming responses in the frontend, debugging a race condition in the async inference pipeline, and optimizing database queries for the vector search layer. It's full-stack engineering with AI at the center.

AI Software Engineer roles are among the most numerous in the AI job market. Every company deploying AI needs software engineers who understand AI integration patterns. The demand is broad, spanning startups to enterprises, across every industry adopting AI capabilities.

Skills Required

Embeddings (6% of roles) Javascript (6% of roles) Rag (23% of roles) Typescript (7% of roles)

Full-stack engineering skills with AI integration experience. Python and TypeScript are the most common requirements. You'll need to understand API design, database architecture, and how to build reliable systems around probabilistic outputs. Experience with streaming, async processing, and caching patterns is increasingly important as real-time AI applications proliferate.

Knowledge of vector databases, embedding APIs, and LLM integration patterns (function calling, structured outputs, retry logic) differentiates AI software engineers from general software engineers. Understanding cost optimization (caching strategies, model routing, batched inference) is valuable since inference costs can dominate application economics.

Strong postings describe the product you'll be building, the AI integration patterns you'll work with, and the scale requirements. Look for companies that have existing AI features and need engineers to improve and expand them, not companies that are 'planning to add AI' someday.

Compensation Benchmarks

AI Software Engineer roles pay a median of $219,250 based on 424 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $200,000. This role's midpoint ($234K) sits 7% above the category median. Disclosed range: $163K to $306K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($300,000) and Research Engineer ($280,000). By seniority level: Entry: $120,000; Mid: $200,000; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,150; VP: $250,000.

Retool AI Hiring

Retool has 3 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, Data Scientist, AI Software Engineer. Based in San Francisco, CA, US. Compensation range: $250K - $315K.

Location Context

AI roles in San Francisco pay a median of $277,088 across 810 tracked positions. That's 27% above the national median.

Career Path

Common paths into AI Software Engineer roles include Software Engineer, Full-Stack Developer, Backend Engineer.

From here, career progression typically leads toward Staff Engineer, AI Architect, Engineering Manager.

If you're a software engineer, you're already 80% there. Learn the AI integration patterns: RAG, streaming inference, function calling, structured outputs. Build a project that demonstrates you can wrap an AI model in a production-quality application with proper error handling, caching, and user experience. That's the portfolio piece that gets you hired.

What to Expect in Interviews

Technical screens look like standard software engineering interviews with an AI twist. Expect system design questions about building reliable applications around probabilistic models: handling streaming responses, implementing retry logic for API failures, and designing caching strategies for LLM outputs. Coding rounds test standard algorithms plus practical integration patterns like async processing and rate limiting.

When evaluating opportunities: Strong postings describe the product you'll be building, the AI integration patterns you'll work with, and the scale requirements. Look for companies that have existing AI features and need engineers to improve and expand them, not companies that are 'planning to add AI' someday.

AI Hiring Overview

The AI job market has 3,708 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 102 entry-level, 1,705 mid-level, 1,469 senior, and 432 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (508 positions). The remaining 3,180 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($300,000 median, 21 roles); Research Engineer ($280,000 median, 147 roles); AI Architect ($254,798 median, 67 roles).

AI Software Engineer roles are among the most numerous in the AI job market. Every company deploying AI needs software engineers who understand AI integration patterns. The demand is broad, spanning startups to enterprises, across every industry adopting AI capabilities.

The AI Job Market Today

The AI job market spans 3,708 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,605), Data Scientist (310), AI Software Engineer (259). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.

The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (102) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,705) and senior (1,469) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 432 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (508 positions), with 3,180 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.

AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $217,500. Top-quartile roles start at $272,100, and the 90th percentile reaches $325,000. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.

Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $300,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.

The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,890 postings), Aws (1,103 postings), Azure (877 postings), Rag (855 postings), Gcp (631 postings), Prompt Engineering (560 postings), Pytorch (545 postings), Claude (498 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.

Frequently Asked Questions

Based on 424 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI Software Engineer positions is $219,250. Actual compensation varies by seniority, location, and company stage.
Full-stack engineering skills with AI integration experience. Python and TypeScript are the most common requirements. You'll need to understand API design, database architecture, and how to build reliable systems around probabilistic outputs. Experience with streaming, async processing, and caching patterns is increasingly important as real-time AI applications proliferate.
About 14% of the 3,708 AI roles we track offer remote work. Remote availability varies by company and seniority level, with senior and leadership roles more likely to offer location flexibility.
Retool is among the companies actively hiring for AI and ML talent. Check our company profiles for detailed breakdowns of open roles, salary ranges, and hiring trends.
Common next steps from AI Software Engineer positions include Staff Engineer, AI Architect, Engineering Manager. Progression depends on whether you lean toward technical depth, people management, or product strategy.

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