---
title: 'Learning Design Lead at Encord'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/learning-design-lead-encord-san-francisco-6dss6rc19q72'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Learning Design Lead at Encord

- **Company:** Encord
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-27
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/encord/4ff7b8b7-afce-45a7-8b05-3e1e0824ac97

## Job description

## 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

As a Learning Design Lead, you will build the instructional backbone of our annotator hiring and onboarding pipeline. Today, annotator training and screening are handled ad hoc — no one on the team has a background in instructional design, and we're essentially winging it. This role exists to fix that: designing training modules robust enough that annotators can learn the task easily, and screening modules rigorous enough that we consistently pass the right people through to production work. This is a foundational hire for a broader goal of automating the end-to-end annotator hiring process.

## What you'll do

- Design and build training modules that teach annotators a given task clearly and efficiently, so they can be onboarded with minimal hand-holding
- Design screening/assessment modules that are difficult enough to reliably separate annotators who will perform well in production from those who won't
- Define grading criteria and pass/fail thresholds for screening assessments, advising the team on how to score submissions, since this methodology doesn't currently exist at Encord
- Use production performance data to continuously validate and refine both training and screening content
- Partner with the Data Strategy team to move toward a fully automated annotator hiring pipeline

Who we're looking for

- A rigorous instructional designer with a strong grounding in learning science and assessment design: rubric design, calibrating item/task difficulty, and validity of pass/fail cutoffs
- A track record of building training or certification content that measurably improves learner readiness
- Experience designing assessments or screening tools that predict on-the-job performance, ideally in an operational or workforce-training setting
- Comfortable operating without an established playbook. You'll be building this methodology from scratch
- Data-driven: you validate and iterate on content using real production performance signals, not just intuition

## Experience requirements

- 5–6+ years of total professional experience
- At least 2+ years in instructional design, curriculum development, assessment/test design, or a related EdTech role
- Solid grounding in learning science and assessment design (e.g., rubric design, calibrating item/task difficulty, validity of pass/fail cutoffs)
- Bonus: background at an EdTech company or in a corporate L&D function
- Bonus: familiarity with data annotation, labeling, or data operations workflows
- Bonus: experience designing or scaling a hiring/screening pipeline

## Why Encord

- Competitive salary, commission, and meaningful equity in a high-growth start-up
- Clear, accelerated growth opportunities as the company scales rapidly
- Strong in-person culture: 4 days/week
- Flexible PTO to fully recharge
- Annual learning & development budget
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
- Frequent travel opportunities across the U.S., London, and Europe
- Bi-annual company offsites, twice-weekly team lunches, and monthly socials

## About Encord

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Encord provides the data infrastructure layer for physical AI, helping teams curate, annotate, evaluate, and manage multimodal training data for systems like autonomous vehicles, robotics, and smart infrastructure.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Venture-backed, $110M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States (with offices in New York, NY and London, UK)
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Ulrik Stig Hansen (CEO/Co-Founder), Eric Landau (Co-Founder & President)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI infrastructure / Data annotation & curation for Physical AI (autonomous vehicles, robotics, world models, industrial automation)
- **Target customers**: Enterprise AI teams building multimodal, sensor-heavy AI systems (B2B, Enterprise)
- **Mission/purpose**: "Train and run AI on the right data" – solving the data quality bottleneck that prevents AI products from reaching production.

## Products & Services
- **Encord Platform**: End-to-end data management platform covering curation, annotation (native video, LiDAR, audio, text, sensor fusion), RLHF alignment, and model evaluation. API/SDK-first, zero data migration, runs on the customer’s cloud.
- **Data-as-a-Service (DaaS)**: Professional services for data collection and annotation, including in-field operators and teleoperation facilities matched to physical AI tasks.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding $110.1M (as of 2026); annual revenue estimated at $5.5M (LinkedIn proxy, "Not publicly available" for official numbers)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: CRV, Y Combinator (W21 batch), and individual investors like Luc Vincent (former VP of AI at Meta). Customers include Toyota, Skydio, Maxar, and UiPath (UiPath achieved near 99% model accuracy and 10x dataset growth using Encord).
- **Growth Signals**: 139 employees (+74.3% YoY, +78 people); 300+ teams using the platform; operates in 7 countries; recognized as one of the fastest-growing companies in the data annotation space; strong customer retention (e.g., UiPath 4x reduction in error rate).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Built for Physical AI**: Multimodal by design from the ground up – handles synchronized LiDAR, camera, radar, depth, force/torque, audio, and text in a single workflow.
- **Enterprise‑grade trust**: Zero data migration (data stays in customer cloud), API/SDK-first integration, label lineage and quality controls for production scale.
- **Proven at scale**: Used by leading autonomous vehicle, robotics, and enterprise AI teams; validated by public case studies (UiPath, Toyota, Skydio).

## Strategic Focus
- Deepen capabilities for world models, VLA (Vision-Language-Action) models, and robotic perception.
- Expand Data-as-a-Service offerings for physical AI data collection and annotation.
- Continue scaling the customer base across industrial, manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, and smart infrastructure verticals.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Strong in-person culture” with hybrid/office‑first approach (San Francisco, New York, London). 45+ nationalities represented. Core values: “Builds with care + urgency” and “High agency”.
- **Compensation & Benefits**: Equity in a hyper‑growth startup; 25 days paid time off; private health insurance (UK/US); team lunch twice a week; monthly team events and bi‑annual offsites; cycle to work scheme; home & tech scheme; annual learning & development stipend; payroll giving scheme.
- **Visa Policy**: Case-by-case visa sponsorship, confirmed early in the recruiter screen.
- **Interview Process**: Typically 4–5 stages: recruiter screen, hiring manager conversation, skills‑based interview or take-home, and final panel. Recruiter walks candidates through specifics upfront.
- **Early‑career programs**: Commercial Associate program (GTM launchpad) and early‑career engineering/ML roles – no formal internship program but hires ambitious early‑career candidates.

## Sources
1. [encord.com – Careers page](https://encord.com/careers)
2. [encord.com – Homepage](https://encord.com/)
3. [encord.com – About page](https://encord.com/about-us/)
4. [linkedin.com – Encord company page](https://es.linkedin.com/company/encord-team)
5. [ycombinator.com – Encord jobs](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/encord/jobs)

## Other roles at Encord

- [Financial Analyst](https://feeny.ai/job/financial-analyst-encord-london-sn0f04xmtywv) — London, United Kingdom
- [Learning & Development Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/learning-development-specialist-encord-london-3jnes7dddr82) — London, United Kingdom
- [Technical Program Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-program-manager-encord-london-szj48frfp5g0) — London, United Kingdom
- [Quality Systems Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/quality-systems-lead-encord-london-3ryf0bcpedap) — London, United Kingdom
- [Senior Software Engineer - Backend](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-backend-encord-london-3afsyr22tbxt) — London, United Kingdom
- [Principal Engineer - Backend](https://feeny.ai/job/principal-engineer-backend-encord-london-stnvm858dsp8) — London, United Kingdom
- [DevOps Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/devops-engineer-encord-san-francisco-jtf91046czvy) — San Francisco, CA
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