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Escalation Engineering Lead

New York, NY · San Francisco, CA

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

As Retool continues to scale rapidly, we need an experienced technical leader to build and manage our Escalation Engineering team. This role will be instrumental in establishing and driving technical excellence across our Technical Customer Experience (TCX) organization, ensuring we maintain the highest customer support standards as we handle increasingly complex deployments and critical customer situations. You will shape the strategic direction of our incident management processes, deployment practices, and technical support capabilities while fostering a culture of continuous improvement, technical excellence, and ensuring that every customer interaction adds value to their experience with Retool.

WHO YOU’LL WORK WITH

You will lead and develop a team of Escalation Engineers while working closely with leaders across Support Engineering, Sales Engineering, Professional Services, and Technical Account Management. You will build strong partnerships with Engineering leadership to influence product improvements, deployment strategies, and technical solutions. As a key leader within TCX, you'll collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to drive initiatives that enhance our customer experience and technical capabilities.

IN THIS ROLE, YOU’LL: 

  • Build and lead the Escalation Engineering team, setting the technical vision and standards for handling our most complex customer issues and critical incidents.
  • Define and iterate on the scope of escalations for supporting internal TCX teams, ensuring stakeholders have clear next steps on ownership and options for resolving technical blockers for customers.
  • Manage and optimize the customer-visible incident management processes, ensuring efficient resolution of P0 issues while maintaining clear communication channels between customers, support teams, and engineering.
  • Represent trends in customer infrastructure blockers with Engineering and Product teams to inform and improve our self-hosted product offerings and troubleshooting capabilities, reducing the need for critical resolutions.
  • Coordinate your team’s contributions towards training programs and mentorship frameworks that elevate the technical capabilities of all customer-facing teams.
  • Partner with Technical Enablement to identify opportunities in escalation trends from TCX teams that can be improved in our technical onboarding, enablement, and certification initiatives.
  • Define and track key performance indicators for the Escalation team, ensuring alignment with broader TCX and company objectives while maintaining transparency in team impact and success metrics.
  • Keep abreast of new technologies and methodologies to continuously improve our technical standards.
  • Champion a culture of inclusiveness, empathy, technical excellence, collaborative problem-solving, and customer-first thinking across the organization.

THE SKILLSETS YOU’LL BRING: 

  • 8+ years of technical experience, with at least 3 years managing technical teams in a customer-facing environment, preferably in a B2B SaaS company.
  • Proven track record of building and leading high-performing technical teams, with experience in hiring, developing, and retaining technical talent.
  • Extensive experience in incident management and critical situation handling, with a strong understanding of best practices in technical support operations.
  • Steady and empathetic leadership in the face of the unknown, with a track record of rallying teams to partner together to resolve blockers impacting customers.
  • Strong technical leadership abilities, demonstrated through successful cross-functional collaboration and influence with engineering teams.
  • Advanced knowledge of cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and enterprise authentication systems (OAuth 2.0, SAML, Okta).
  • Strategic thinking capabilities with a track record of implementing successful technical initiatives that drive measurable business impact.
  • Deep technical expertise in fullstack development, including advanced knowledge of JavaScript, various database systems, and modern web technologies.

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

$205,400 - $278,000 USD

For candidates based in New York, 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.

New York

$205,400 - $278,000 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.

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