Forward Deployed Software Engineer

About us

We're solving AI's hardest problem: alignment.

Encord is the data layer for Physical AI and enterprise, serving as core infrastructure for 300+ of the world's leading AI teams, including Woven by Toyota, Hitachi, Skydio, AbbVie and Dyna, Walden and Agility Robotics. From autonomous vehicles and robotics to sports and healthcare, we're solving AI's hardest problem: turning complex, real-world data into production-ready intelligent systems.

We're a team of founders, scientists, quants, researchers, and former Olympians, who’ve helped build some of the most successful companies in Silicon Valley, and alumni of MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, and Imperial. We’ve raised $110M from legendary technology investors, early backers of companies like Databricks, ElevenLabs and Vercel, and we’re growing at an extraordinary pace.

We're looking for exceptional people who want to help build a category-defining company, operating with high urgency and taking real ownership to help shape the future of AI.

The role

We're looking for an exceptional Forward Deployed Software Engineer (FDSE) to join our engineering team. This is an engineering-first role: FDSEs are the technical owners who take the Encord platform into our most strategic and advanced customer environments, working directly with users and their engineering teams to understand complex problems, make system design decisions, and build production software that solves them.

As an early member of the Forward Deployed team, you'll have an outsized impact on shaping a critical engineering function at Encord. You'll work hands-on across the stack, from APIs and data workflows to backend services and product surfaces, while owning technical problems end to end. You'll make architecture decisions under real production constraints, debug complex integrations and workflows, and build solutions that can scale beyond a single customer or use case. You'll operate autonomously, defining the right technical approach with limited guidance, building trusted relationships with users, and feeding what you learn directly back into the product and engineering roadmap.

What you'll do

• Design and build production software for complex data, ML, and application environments

• Own system design decisions for deployments, balancing correctness, scalability, performance, and speed

• Work directly with customers and their engineering teams to understand ambiguous problems and define the right technical solution

• Build across the stack, from APIs and data workflows to backend systems and product-facing functionality

• Own deployments from technical scoping through implementation, rollout, and iteration

• Turn recurring customer problems into reusable tooling and product capabilities

• Debug complex production issues across reliability, performance, and data flow

• Communicate technical decisions and trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Operate with high autonomy and own problems end to end

• Feed deployment insights back into Product and Engineering, and help shape the FDSE function as the team grows

Who we're looking for

• A strong software engineer. You have solid fundamentals and the technical depth to design and build complex production systems

• A first-principles problem solver. You dig into the underlying problem, challenge assumptions, and make sound technical and product trade-offs rather than defaulting to the obvious solution

• A strong communicator and stakeholder partner. You can build trust, navigate competing priorities, and explain complex decisions clearly

• An autonomous builder. You operate with limited guidance, create structure from ambiguity, and drive problems through to production

• A versatile product engineer. You’re comfortable working across the stack and moving between hands-on engineering, product thinking, and conversations with the people using what you build

Experience requirements

• 4+ years of software engineering experience with strong CS fundamentals

• Experience building production software across the stack, from product-facing applications and APIs to backend services and data workflows

• Strong system design judgment and experience making architecture decisions for complex software

• Strong coding skills in a modern language; Python is a plus

• Evidence of owning technical problems end to end, from design through production

• Strong product judgment, technical communication, and stakeholder management

• Experience working directly with users, customers, or external engineering teams is a plus

• Bonus: experience in a high-growth startup, developer platform, or ML/data product environment

Why Encord

• Competitive salary, commission, and meaningful equity in a high-growth startup

• Clear, accelerated growth opportunities as the company scales rapidly

• Strong in-person culture: 4 days/week

• Daily team lunches & dinners

• Annual learning & development budget

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage

• US employees: 18 paid vacation days plus US public holidays

• UK employees: 25 paid vacation days plus UK public holidays

• Frequent travel opportunities across the U.S., London, and Europe

• Bi-annual company offsites & monthly socials

Operating principles

High agency

You see something broken, you fix it or find the person who can. We celebrate the people who solve 90% of a problem before anyone asks.

Build with care & urgency

We bear-hug the customer. Former founders and people from fast-moving, high-stakes environments thrive here.

Self-aware & hungry

We stay warm, self-aware, and genuinely hungry. We elevate our peers, and ego doesn't last long.

Invent in real time

We move toward the ambiguity. We’re pragmatic, resourceful, energized by the fact that there's no playbook.

If you're looking to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who push you to be better, we'd love to meet you.