---
title: 'Senior Software Engineer - Backend at Encord'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-backend-encord-london-3afsyr22tbxt'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Senior Software Engineer - Backend at Encord

- **Company:** Encord
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-21
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/encord/70ff84bd-9cb5-47a9-856f-5110f5b25d61

## 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

We're looking for a Senior Engineer to join our Foundations team, the backend backbone that builds the reliable, scalable, fast systems everyone else at Encord builds on top of. The team's core challenges sit deep in distributed and data-intensive systems.

The product mindset on this team is different from most of the company: short-term product insight matters less, long-term matters a lot. Foundations plans around how the next 6, 12, and 24 months will look, with an overarching shape to the problem: handling multiple orders of magnitude the data we handle today.

Encord is growing rapidly, with our product as the key driver of that growth. A year ago, we were a team of 100; now, we're over 150 and continuing to accelerate. The systems that got us here won't get us to what's next. That's the problem you'll help solve.

## WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Take end-to-end ownership of significant projects within our database and processing systems, from design and architectural decisions all the way to deployment, monitoring, and measuring impact
- Build robust distributed systems and reason carefully about how they fail and how they behave under load
- Contribute to performant protocols and APIs, such as our label-format API, that customers use directly
- Tackle complex domains and immense scale with simple solutions
- Raise the bar through code reviews, pairing, and helping engineers around you do their best work

## WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR

- You've seen and built a lot. You have personally developed and maintained multiple systems from scratch, and you know what trade-offs are involved in building reliable, performant software at speed
- You want your work to have a tangible outcome for people. You're not satisfied with building products that do not see the light of day
- You are a builder. You enjoy all aspects of building not only software but a complete product, and are comfortable moving across the stack when necessary
- You enjoy problem-solving and thinking from first principles, reach for the simplest solution that works, and know when boring technology wins
- You're happy to tackle problems without a predefined, clear definition or obvious solution, and are excited to have autonomy to make decisions as you go
- You understand that being a member of a high-performing team requires two things. You contribute your best work and help others contribute their best. You'll always lend a helping hand when needed and level up those around you

## EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS

- 5+ years building large-scale backend infrastructure applications
- Deep fluency in at least one high-level language (we use Python and TypeScript, but we care more about depth than the specific language)
- Solid grounding in distributed systems concepts (databases, replication, partitioning, queuing, caching) and how they behave under load
- Experience owning services in production and improving quality through code reviews, testing, rollout, and monitoring
- Experience with data migrations or re-architecture projects is a plus

## TECH STACK

We are technology-agnostic at Encord and are 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 meaningful equity in a high-growth startup
- Strong in-person culture: 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

## 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
- [Learning Design Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/learning-design-lead-encord-san-francisco-6dss6rc19q72) — San Francisco, CA
- [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
- [Solutions Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/solutions-engineer-encord-london-10h4nd11q84b) — London, United Kingdom
- [Customer Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-engineer-encord-new-york-0fwzrrdmx2b6) — New York, NY
- [Account Executive, Physical AI](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-physical-ai-encord-london-mz2fnybs4s45) — London, United Kingdom