What are the responsibilities and job description for the Engineering Manager, Core Infrastructure position at retool?
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
Our core infrastructure team builds and optimizes foundational systems that power our databases, caching, and data storage architecture for reliability, security, performance, and scalability. As our Engineering Manager for core infrastructure, you’ll lead a team of engineers who are equal parts builders and operators crafting systems that make Retool faster, more resilient, and easier to develop on. You’ll combine technical depth with strong leadership instincts, guiding the team through ambiguity and tradeoffs to deliver outsized business impact.
This is a high-leverage role: the systems you oversee will directly impact how every product feature gets built, tested, deployed, and scaled.
IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL
- Lead and grow a team of infrastructure engineers and SREs responsible for Retool’s backend architecture/infrastructure for both cloud and on-premise deployments
- Set the long-term vision and roadmap for infrastructure, aligning with product engineering and business priorities
- Partner with product and engineering leaders to ensure platform scalability, security, and performance to keep pace with our growth
- Drive initiatives in areas such as observability, CI/CD automation, networking, and developer tooling
- Define metrics and processes that improve developer productivity and reduce friction in how teams build and ship code
- Collaborate across teams to evolve our backend architecture for both cloud and self-hosted environments
THE SKILLSET YOU’LL BRING
- 4 years successfully leading and managing infrastructure, SRE, or platform engineering teams
- Deep technical understanding across cloud architecture, distributed systems, networking, and developer tooling
- Proven experience scaling infrastructure to support rapid product and user growth
- Strong operational experience — you care about observability, incident response, and system reliability
- History of improving developer velocity through better tooling, automation, and processes
- Proficiency in navigating through ambiguity, managing stakeholders, communicating in a structured manner, as well as driving maximal accountability and excellence
For candidates based in San Francisco, 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/bonuses 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.
San Francisco
$188,400 - $251,900 USD
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 : $188,400 - $251,900