The mandate: Design and build the internal and external AI systems that power how Retell hires, sells, operates, and scales — production AI workflows, automations, and agent systems — on the Founders Initiatives team, working directly with the founders. This req combines the two strongest features across the cluster. From the Internal Deployed Engineer posting: explicit openness to 0–1 years, full comp band, equity, O-1. From the New Grad posting: the two-track career path, which is the single best thing in any Founders Initiatives JD. The two paths after joining:
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Customer-facing — work with enterprise customers, design AI solutions, build integrations, become a trusted technical advisor. This is the on-ramp to Retell's Senior Forward Deployed Engineer track.
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Internal engineering — AI systems, internal tooling, automations, and infrastructure. Most engineers touch both early and lean into one over time. Make this central to outreach. A new grad who doesn't yet know whether they're a customer-facing engineer or a deep technical one gets to find out on the job rather than guessing at offer time. Almost no new-grad role offers that. "This is not a narrowly scoped role, it is a high ownership builder position." What You'll Own HR and recruiting AI
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Structured signal extraction from résumés — skills, experience, founder traits, domain expertise
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Lead scoring models predicting interview success and role fit
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AI recruiter workflows for screening and qualification
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Personalized outbound and candidate engagement automation Security and compliance
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Automation for BAAs, DPAs, DocuSign, and contract review flows
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Security questionnaire and compliance response generation
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Internal tooling for enterprise readiness and audit Operational infrastructure
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Accounts receivable automation and finance email workflows
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Automated enterprise onboarding and account setup
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Systems that cut manual overhead across teams Integrations and platform
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Salesforce, HubSpot, GoHighLevel
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Zapier, n8n, Make
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LLM systems on OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, and others
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API integrations connecting internal systems GTM engineering
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HubSpot and Lark automations for sales and marketing efficiency
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Lifecycle automation for engagement and retention
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Website personalization and ad content generation
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Email personalization and outbound pipelines at scale Requirements Hard gates:
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Bachelor's in CS, CE, or a closely related technical field. "Closely related" is softer phrasing than the New Grad req's CS/CE/EE — more room here.
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New grad or up to 1 year of professional software engineering experience. Note this is framed as a ceiling, not a floor. Confirm whether a 2–3 year engineer would be considered — the sibling reqs cover them, so probably not, but recruiters need to know before they source.
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Strong software engineering fundamentals — backend, full-stack, or systems. The 90-minute coding round is the gate.
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Demonstrated exceptional ability through internships, research, startup work, or meaningful side projects
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Hands-on LLM, AI agent, or modern AI tooling experience — listed as a requirement here, unlike the New Grad req where it was preferred. Internships, research, or personal projects all count.
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Redwood City (confirm on-site status) Profile:
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Founder mindset, ownership from day one
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Excited to work across product, engineering, and operations
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Moves fast, learns fast, thrives in ambiguity
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Prefers end-to-end systems over defined tasks
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Cares about real customer problems Strong bonuses:
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A shipped side project with real users — highest-signal item for this pool, substitutes for professional experience better than any internship
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An AI or agent project specifically — given AI tooling is a stated requirement, having built one is the fastest way to clear the bar
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Hackathon wins, especially AI and agent tracks
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Startup internship at a company under 50 people with real scope
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Research with a shipped artifact
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Open-source contributions with actual usage
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Competitive programming or CS competition results
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Built something that automated a real process for a real organization Location and visa:
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Redwood City
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Sponsorship: H-1B, TN, L-1, E-3, F-1 (OPT/CPT), and O-1. F-1 OPT/CPT is decisive here — this is a high-comp new-grad role at a company that sponsors, which most of the international CS graduating class cannot find. Anti-patterns
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Candidates who need structure, mentorship, or an onboarding ramp
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Strong interviewers with nothing built independently — project deep dives happen twice
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No AI or LLM exposure at all; it's a stated requirement on this req
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Anyone who'd rather be on the core product team and sees internal systems as second-tier
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No-code operators — the 90-minute coding round is the filter
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Candidates optimizing for company brand over scope
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Remote requirements Who Will Thrive Here
Someone who's been building things nobody assigned since they were seventeen, has an AI project with real users, and would rather own a system the whole company runs on than be the junior engineer on a large team. They're comfortable with "figure it out." They see recruiting automation and invoicing as problems with an owner attached, which is more responsibility than most engineers their age get for a decade.