ABOUT RETOOL
Nearly every company in the world runs on custom software: Gartner estimates that up to 50% of all code is written for internal use. This is the operational software for refunding orders, underwriting loans, onboarding employees, analyzing transactions, and providing customer support. 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 on a mission to bring good software to everyone. We’re building a new type of development platform that combines the benefits of traditional software development with a drag-and-drop UI editor and AI, making it dramatically faster to build internal tools. We believe that the future of software development lies in abstracting away the tedious and repetitive tasks developers waste time on, while creating reusable components that act as a force multiplier for future developers and projects. The result is not just productivity, but good software by default. And that’s a mission worth striving for.
Today, our customers span from small startups building their first operational tools to Fortune 500 companies building mission-critical apps for thousands of users across their business. Interested in joining us? Let us know!
WHY WE’RE LOOKING FOR YOU:
Today, nearly every company in the world runs on custom internal software: Gartner estimates that up to 50% of all code is written for internal usage. This is the mission-critical software that runs business workflows: refunding orders, underwriting loans, moderating content, managing marketplaces, rolling out new features, onboarding employees, analyzing transactions, providing customer support…the list is nearly endless. For most companies, building and maintaining all of these tools demands a lot of engineering time—scarce, expensive resources better put to use on customer-facing products.
At Retool, we’re designing a new type of development environment that makes it dramatically faster and easier to build all of this internal software. Retool unifies the ease of visual programming with the power of code, while abstracting away the tedious and repetitive tasks of development. We believe that the future of software development lies in being a force multiplier for developers and technical builders, helping them move considerably faster and build a lot more software.
ABOUT THE TEAM:
Retool designers make decisions that will affect millions of people, from the developers creating software to the employees who operate it every day. Instead of designing just one product, we’re effectively designing unique software products for thousands of companies across many different verticals.
This also presents a unique design challenge. Because it’s possible to build nearly anything in Retool, we don’t have absolute control over how our users experience the product. We’re constantly seeking just the right balance between convention and configuration, between technical expressiveness and conceptual simplicity.
As a Product Designer, you’ll be joining an experienced, tight-knit, and collaborative group from diverse backgrounds who love combining research, data insights, and peer feedback into a user-centered design process. While we work very closely with our product teams, we’re intentional about preserving space for designers to learn and work alongside each other.
WHAT YOU’LL DO:
- Own and drive the complete product design lifecycle of major features
- Partner with product, engineering, success, sales, and marketing to understand business objectives and uncover customer insights
- Perform user research to identify problems and validate solutions
- Produce the artifacts needed—specs, sketches, wireframes, mockups, prototypes, or code—to take UI ideas from conception to production
- Participate in design reviews and share work regularly with designers, cross-functional teams, leadership, and the company
- Contribute to Retool’s design system and component library
- Help establish design team processes and uphold high standards for design and product quality
WHAT YOU'LL WORK ON:
- Adoption—Accelerate the adoption of Retool by shortening time-to-value, inspiring new customers, and encouraging network effects
- App experience—Design the core desktop building experience for Retool, from drag-and-drop UI building to writing queries and debugging apps
- Design systems—Design the system that defines Retool and our customers’ apps
- Developer toolchain—Connect and improve on the traditional software development stack of environments, source control, documentation, testing, and release management
- Hub—Help our largest customers scale with Retool as a unified, integrated platform, from permissions management to observability and product analytics
- Grid—Empower customers to immediately visualize their own databases and create new databases within Retool to power their apps
- Mobile—Extend desktop Retool to support mobile-first workforces that rely on native mobile capabilities
- Workflows—Enable customers to build and execute human-in-the-loop business processes that bring together backend automation with Retool’s frontend UI
THE SKILLSET YOU'LL BRING:
- Have a strong portfolio demonstrating a generalist design skills and experience driving the product design lifecycle from end-to-end
- Are excited about breaking down technically complex problems into abstractions, finding a balance between ease of use, learnability, and power
- Love thinking systematically about hard problems with a lot of tradeoffs—then going deep on getting the details right through rapid, continual iteration
- Are customer-obsessed and excited to spend time with users
- Have experience designing developer-centric products, creative software, and/or enterprise internal tools
- Are comfortable with basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. (Bonus points if you have some working knowledge of SQL, databases, or APIs!)
- Are an excellent communicator (and consider writing to be a fundamental design skill)
- Thrive in ambiguity, can independently prioritize work based on user needs and business goals, and take responsibility to drive product ideas forward
- Are inspired to radically rethink how software is built
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
$164,600—$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.
Top Skills
What We Do
Retool is a development platform for building business software. Users can visually design apps that interface with any database or API, and switch to code to customize how their apps look and work. With Retool, developers ship more apps and move their business forward—all in less time.
Thousands of teams at companies like Amazon, DoorDash, Peloton, and Brex collaborate around custom-built Retool apps to solve internal workflows. We're just getting started and growing quickly—join us!
Why Work With Us
Retools are solution drivers—whether fixing a button misalignment or enabling customers to build with the newest AI technologies, we wear many hats and act like owners. Our small teams work on big problems, pushing hard and moving quickly to create outsized impact. We hold each other accountable and celebrate together when we get it right. Join us!
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