Forward Deployed Engineer, Intern
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
ABOUT THE ROLE
We’re looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer Intern to work directly with our customers and engineering team.
You’ll sit at the intersection of engineering and customers. You’ll help build, test, and deploy AI voice solutions for real-world use cases, troubleshoot technical issues, and work closely with customers to make sure what we build actually works in production.
This isn’t a typical internship where you’re working on a side project. You’ll work on real customer deployments, ship code, and see the impact of your work quickly.
You’ll also work closely with our engineering team to bring what we learn from customers back into the product.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Build & Deploy: Build and deploy technical solutions for real customer use cases.
Work with Customers: Join customer calls, understand their problems, and help turn those problems into technical solutions.
Solve Problems: Debug issues across APIs, integrations, data, and AI systems.
Ship Quickly: Write code, test solutions, and get them into production.
Improve the Product: Identify patterns across deployments and work with engineering to turn them into product improvements.
Own Projects: Take projects from an initial customer problem through deployment and iteration.
YOU MIGHT THRIVE IF
You’re pursuing a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
You enjoy building things and figuring out how they work.
You have experience programming in Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, or a similar language.
You’re comfortable working through ambiguous technical problems.
You’re interested in AI and want to work on systems that are actually being used by customers.
You communicate clearly and enjoy working directly with people.
You move quickly and take ownership without needing everything spelled out.
You’ve built projects, shipped software, or worked on something outside of school that you’re excited to talk about.
JOB DETAILS
Employment Type: Internship
Location: San Francisco Bay Area - Redwood City
Work Arrangement: In-office
Compensation: Competitive internship compensation