Founding Sales Engineer

About the role

Retell AI is seeking a Founding Sales Engineer to operate at the deepest levels of our enterprise sales process. You will own the technical narrative of our Voice AI platform, articulating how first-principles architecture translates into tangible business value for the world's largest contact centers. This role demands you bridge the gap between complex AI capabilities and pragmatic enterprise deployment, ensuring technical confidence drives purchasing decisions. You will act as a critical advisor, challenging assumptions and uncovering latent needs within high-stakes discovery sessions. You will translate ambiguous customer problems into precise solution designs that leverage the core strengths of our platform. As a representative of the company's technical vision, you will be responsible for building trust and credibility with the most demanding technical stakeholders. You will own key strategic initiatives that directly influence our product trajectory and market positioning in the competitive voice AI landscape.

Key facts

What you'll do

Define and own the enterprise technical sales strategy for our Voice AI platform, shaping how large organizations evaluate and adopt AI call automation.

Lead complex technical discovery sessions, diagnosing customer architectures and designing bespoke Voice AI solutions that align with strict enterprise security and scalability requirements.

Architect and deliver high-impact technical proofs of concept and demos that de-risk sales cycles and clearly quantify operational efficiency gains for executive sponsors.

Translate intricate customer requirements into detailed solution designs, specifying API integrations, conversation flows, and deployment models for production environments.

Serve as the primary technical consultant for enterprise stakeholders, presenting to engineering leaders, solution architects, and C-suite executives with clarity and authority.

Own the creation of critical technical artifacts including RFP responses, security questionnaires, architecture diagrams, and detailed documentation that accelerate the sales cycle.

Partner with Product and Engineering to synthesize customer feedback, translating real-world deployment challenges into actionable product improvements and a sharper roadmap.

Establish and refine the repeatable technical sales playbooks and onboarding frameworks that empower our Sales and Customer Success teams to scale efficiently.

Guide flagship customers through the transition from pilot to production, ensuring technical validation, performance benchmarking, and seamless integration with their existing telephony and CRM ecosystems.

Champion Retell's technical vision in external forums, building credibility as the go-to expert in enterprise Voice AI deployment and best practices.

Collaborate closely with Customer Success to design post-sale technical handoffs, ensuring smooth implementation and long-term customer retention.

Develop compelling narrative arcs that connect Retell's first-principles architecture to measurable outcomes like reduced handle time and increased contact resolution.

Evaluate emerging enterprise requirements, providing structured feedback to leadership on feasibility, resource allocation, and strategic prioritization.

Drive technical diligence for strategic accounts, mitigating perceived risk and reinforcing the reliability of our AI voice agents in mission-critical scenarios.

Requirements

You possess a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a closely related technical field, or you have equivalent practical experience.

You have a minimum of five years of progressive experience in sales engineering, solution architecture, or technical consulting within enterprise software or SaaS environments.

You demonstrate a proven track record of selling complex technical solutions to enterprise customers, managing deals with significant value and long sales cycles.

You have deep expertise in designing and implementing APIs and integrations, with hands-on experience connecting systems within large, distributed architectures.

You are exceptionally comfortable working with asynchronous communication, including technical documentation, email, and structured presentations, while maintaining clarity and precision.

You bring substantial experience with AI technologies, including prompt engineering, LLM orchestration, and evaluating model performance for production use cases.

You have a strong history of collaborating with cross-functional teams, including Sales, Product, and Engineering, to align on technical strategy and execution.

You hold a strong security mindset, understanding enterprise concerns around data privacy, compliance, and secure deployment of AI systems.

Nice to have

Experience with contact center technologies, including telephony systems, IVR, and routing logic.

Knowledge of voice protocols such as SIP and WebRTC, and audio processing concepts.

Familiarity with Retell's specific tech stack and agentic AI deployment methodologies.

Practical notes

This role is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and requires in-person presence.

This is a full-time position with standard employment benefits.

Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship for this role.