EncordAssociate Back-End Engineer
About us
Encord is the universal data layer for AI that helps 300+ AI teams train and run models on the right data. Our platform indexes, curates, annotates, and evaluates data across the full AI lifecycle, from development through production.
Trusted by Woven by Toyota, AXA, UiPath, Zipline, and more. We're an ambitious team of 100+ working at the frontier of AI and have raised $60M in Series C funding from Wellington Management, CRV, Next47 and Y Combinator.
The role
We're looking for an outstanding engineer to push our platform to the next level. You'll join us at a crucial stage of accelerated development for the company, product and team. As part of a small, highly collaborative group, you'll drive our product and team to new heights.
Encord is growing rapidly, with our product as the key driver of that growth. A year ago, we were a team of 50; now, we're over 100 and continuing to accelerate.
What you'll do
- High performing team: Join the small team that has built a product our customers love and consistently rate as the best in the market, alongside veterans of both Big Tech and successful startups
- Impact: Your work will have direct and tangible impact for customers and noticeably affect the trajectory of the company
- End-to-end ownership: Take ownership of your projects from product, design and architectural decisions all the way to deployment, monitoring and measuring impact on users — we expect each other to take initiative, be proactive in problem-solving, and continuously seek improvements
- Autonomy and collaboration: Work autonomously to drive your projects forward while leaning on a lean, high-trust team to collaborate on challenging problems
- Scale and simplicity: Tackle complex domains and immense scale with simple solutions, leveraging your expertise to solve challenging problems elegantly
Who we're looking for
- Experienced: You have personally developed and maintained multiple systems from scratch or significantly contributed to major changes to existing systems, and understand the trade-offs involved in building reliable, performant software at speed
- High impact-driven: You want your work to have a tangible outcome for people and aren't satisfied building products that don't move the needle
- A builder: You enjoy all aspects of building a complete product, are comfortable moving across the stack, and enjoy problem-solving from first principles
- Comfortable with uncertainty: Happy to tackle problems without a predefined solution, and excited to have autonomy to make decisions as you go
- A team player: You contribute your best work and help others do the same — you enjoy lending a helping hand and levelling up those around you
Experience requirements
- 3+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of owning and shipping production systems end-to-end
- Strong backend engineering fundamentals — proficiency in Python or equivalent, with experience designing and maintaining scalable, reliable APIs and services
- Demonstrated ability to make sound architectural decisions and articulate trade-offs across system design, performance, and maintainability
- Comfortable working across the stack — you don't need to be an expert in every layer, but you can navigate unfamiliar territory and ship complete solutions
- Experience deploying and operating software in cloud environments (GCP, AWS, or Azure), with familiarity with containerisation and orchestration (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes)
- Proven ability to work with a high degree of autonomy in a fast-moving, low-process environment — you take initiative, unblock yourself, and drive projects to completion
- Bonus: Experience with TypeScript/React, ML frameworks (PyTorch, CUDA, Ray), or building products at the intersection of AI and data infrastructure
Tech stack
We are technology agnostic at Encord and not looking for experience across all of these — as long as you're open to learning, please apply.
- Backend: Python
- Frontend: TypeScript and React
- Deployment: Kubernetes
- Infrastructure: GCP
- Machine Learning: PyTorch, CUDA, Ray
Why Encord
- Competitive salary, commission, and equity in a high-growth startup
- Strong in-person culture — most of the team works from our London office 4+ days/week
- 25 days annual leave + UK public holidays
- Annual learning & development budget
- Travel for customer visits, events, and conferences across the UK and Europe
- Company lunches twice a week
- Monthly socials & bi-annual team offsites