Backend Software Engineer

Encord; London; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job description

About Encord

At Encord, we're building the AI infrastructure of the future. One of the biggest challenges AI companies face today is data quality. The success of any AI application relies heavily on the quality of its training data, yet for most teams, this crucial step is both the most costly and time-consuming. We’re here to change that.

As former computer scientists, physicists, and quants, we’ve experienced firsthand how a lack of tools to prepare quality training data impedes progress in building AI. We believe AI is at a stage similar to the early days of computing or the internet—where the potential is clear, but the surrounding tools and processes are still catching up. That's why we started Encord.

We are a talented and ambitious team of 75+, working at the cutting edge of computer vision and deep learning. Backed by $30M in Series B funding from top investors like CRV and Y Combinator, we’re one of the fastest-growing companies in our space. We have big plans ahead and are looking to expand our Engineering team to help us in building a better product for our customers.

Who we are looking for

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 25; now, we’re 60 and continuing to accelerate.

What to expect

1. High performing team: You'll join the small team that has built a product that our customers love and consistently rate as the best in the market. Members of the team are veterans of both Big Tech and successful startups. While the team is more than a sum of its parts, every member on the team is impressive on their own.
2. Impact: Your work will have direct and tangible impact for customers and in turn noticeably affect the trajectory of the company.
3. End-to-end ownership: You will be entrusted with end-to-end ownership of your projects. From product, design and architectural decisions, all the way to deployment, monitoring and measuring impact on users. You will work across the stack, covering everything from deployment to styling. We expect each other to take initiative, be proactive in problem-solving, and continuously seek improvements.
4. Autonomy and collaboration: You will often work autonomously to take charge of your projects, make decisions, and drive your work forward. But as a lean and high trust team, we remain quick to collaborate and support each other with challenging problems together.
5. Scale and simplicity: You will tackle complex domains and immense scale with simple solutions. You'll leverage your expertise to solve challenging problems in simple ways.

About You

1. Are experienced: You have seen a lot and built a lot compared to your peers. 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.
2. Seek high impact: You want your work to have a tangible outcome for people. You're not satisfied when building products that do not see the light of day or move a number by a tenth of a percent.
3. 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. You’re ready to pick up new skills and build quickly.
4. Are comfortable with uncertainty: 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.
5. Are a team player: You understand that being a member of a high-performing team requires two things. You contribute your best work. You also help others contribute their best. You enjoy lending a helping hand when needed and levelling up those around you.

Tech stack

We are technology agnostic at Encord. We are not looking for you to have experience in all these technologies. As long as you're open to learning, please apply.

We currently use Python and Typescript across our codebase. Prior experience is appreciated but not required.

Below is a detailed breakdown of all the technologies we use:

• Backend: Python
• Frontend: Typescript and React
• Kubernetes for deployment
• GCP for underlying infrastructure
• Machine Learning: PyTorch, CUDA, Ray

We encourage people from all backgrounds, cultures and skill levels to apply. It is okay to not meet all requirements listed as we are looking for individuals who are passionate, eager to learn.

What We Offer

1. Competitive salary, commission and equity in a hyper growth business.
2. Strong in-person culture: most of our team is in the office 3+ days a week.
3. Room to grow into anything you choose to — a year ago we were 25 people, now we're 60. We'll be growing insanely fast over the next 24 months and you'll have all the opportunities for growth as you can handle.
4. 25 days annual leave a year + public holidays.

Encord offers a unique opportunity to be part of a startup with a clear mission and vision. You will get to explore and build services enterprise AI use cases across many different industry verticals such as healthcare, surveillance, retail, agriculture and many more.

Our work is at the cutting edge of computer vision and deep learning, which also includes working on solving unsolved problems within those fields.