Forward Deployed Software 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 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 customer data, ML, and application environments

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

• Work directly with users and 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 across technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Operate with high autonomy and own problems through to outcome

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

Who we're looking for

• Strong computer science fundamentals and the ability to reason from first principles

• A track record of designing and shipping complex production systems

• Experience making architecture and system design decisions at meaningful scale

• Breadth across backend, full-stack, infrastructure, data, or ML systems

• Strong product judgment: you care about solving the right problem, not simply implementing the requested solution

• Excellent technical communication and the ability to build trust with sophisticated engineering teams

• Curiosity and empathy when working with users or customers

• Comfort operating in ambiguity, making decisions independently, and moving quickly without perfect information

• A bias toward ownership: you naturally follow problems through from discovery to production impact

Experience requirements

• 4+ years in a software engineering role

• Experience building or working with data integrations and APIs; Python is a big plus

• Strong written and verbal communication skills

• Ability to thrive in ambiguity and take ownership without being told what to do

• Prior experience at a high-growth startup is a plus

Why Encord

• Competitive salary, commission, and meaningful 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