My yard did not have a steep slope, but I did want to avoid the slumping that the rest of the yards have been experiencing, so we put in some amount of "terracing" around the pool.
The whole plan changed as we went along - first thing right away, the builder realized that we needed to drop the whole pool 4 inches. Apparently the city doesn't like the raised beam more than 24" high, so if it was higher, we'd have to get it engineered and a different approval process.
Later we realized that the side yard was much higher than the backyard, so we had to add more stairs and another retaining wall.
The whole thing was under $60K and that's with the expensive Artistic Shellock pavers and coping.
If you click on my pool blog progress-in-pix and scroll down to the very last picture, it gives a good idea of how we dealt with the slope.

Here is a link that might be useful: New Blue Pool Blog

Here are some pics of our pool on a slope. Keep in mind that the sod is new in these pics, so it doesn't look as nice as it would once it's all grown in. Let me know if you have any questions.

view of pool from front

view from side yard