Application Engineer

Remote
Contracted
Experienced

Pathlabs is an end-to-end digital media partner built for agencies. We handle all aspects of our clients’ digital media campaigns, so they can focus on growing their business.

Pathlabs is an extension of an agency’s team, combining the best of both worlds between in-house teams and media vendors. In a product-obsessed world, we double down on service-based solutions. We focus on planning, executing, optimizing, and reporting of performance-based paid advertising campaigns - providing our clients a single point of entry into the world of digital media.

About This Engagement

We're looking for a contract Application Engineer to take over ongoing development of our internal Retool platform.

This is a handoff, not a greenfield build. The platform exists; it's in daily production use, and the work is currently being done by our VP of Technology. You'd be inheriting a real system with existing conventions, existing data models, and existing users who will notice if something breaks. That means we need someone who's genuinely good at reading and extending someone else's work — understanding why something was built the way it was before deciding to change it.

Engagement Details

  • Type: Independent contractor, project-based
  • Rate: Negotiable
  • Expected availability: 30-40hrs / week
  • Initial engagement: September 2026 - February 2027
  • Ongoing: Project-based as capacity demands. No guaranteed minimum hours.
  • Location: Fully remote
  • Equipment: You provide your own.
  • Before you touch client data: We'll need a signed NDA and IP assignment. 

What You’ll Do

This is not a software engineering role at a product company. It's a role for someone who thrives at the intersection of business operations and technology — someone who can take a defined problem, understand the system context around it, and build a clean, maintainable solution.

You'll work directly with our VP of Technology and Data Operations Manager. Your job is to bridge the gap between our data pipeline and the tools our team actually uses: making sure permissions are structured correctly, integrations are sound, and new components bolt on without creating technical debt.

Responsibilities

  • Own the application layer across our internal and client-facing tooling, including architecture, permissions, and integrations
  • Build and extend Retool applications — queries, components, state, and the backend logic behind them
  • Design and maintain multi-layer permission and identity systems across connected platforms, ensuring role-based access is enforced consistently end to end and identity is maintained between systems.
  • Continuously assess existing application architecture for efficiency, scalability, and gaps, and drive improvements as the stack evolves
  • Partner with the data team so application behavior stays aligned with the underlying data model and pipeline
  • Own the integration of analytics, reporting, and other capabilities into core platforms
  • Plan and execute extensions to existing tools, including client-facing surfaces
  • Document what you build so it can be maintained, handed off, and extended
  • Give clear status updates and flag blockers early

Required

  • 4+ years building or maintaining internal business applications or integrated tooling environments
  • Substantial hands-on Retool experience. You've built and shipped non-trivial Retool applications
  • You're comfortable with queries and transformers, component state, custom components, and Retool's permissions and source-control models.
  • Hands-on experience with permissions architecture across multi-system environments
  • Comfort with relational databases: reading and writing queries, understanding data relationships, and knowing when a schema decision will cause problems later
  • Experience integrating third-party platforms via APIs or embed patterns
  • JavaScript/TypeScript proficiency
  • Ability to work independently from a defined spec, and the judgment to flag when the spec needs to change
  • Demonstrated ability to inherit and extend an existing codebase without needing to rebuild it
  • Strong written communication

Required — AI-Assisted Development

We build with AI tooling as a matter of course, including inside Retool itself. We're looking for someone already working this way.
  • You use agentic coding tools in real production work — Claude Code, Cursor, or similar — and can speak concretely about where they help and where they get in the way
  • You've used AI-assisted app building in a low-code environment, or you can clearly demonstrate you'd pick it up fast
  • You know which problems belong to an LLM and which belong in deterministic code
To be clear about what this is not: we aren't training or fine-tuning models. We're using AI as part of how we build, and building AI features into internal products.

Nice to Have

  • Experience with embedded analytics or BI platform integrations
  • Digital advertising domain knowledge — media planning, campaign operations, or agency reporting
  • Airtable, Snowflake, or similar
  • Google Cloud Platform
  • Next.js
  • Prior work in an agency, media services company, or another environment with real client deadlines

Our Stack

  • Retool
  • Snowflake
  • Python
  • TypeScript/Next.js
  • Google Cloud Run
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