Former Technical Founders

Encord; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary & equity

London in-person culture

25 days annual leave + UK holidays

Learning & development budget

Travel for customer visits across UK/€

Company lunches

Team offsites

Job summary

Encord, a London-based startup, seeks former founders to return to hands-on building. You will work directly with the founding team on high-stakes problems, shaping the company’s trajectory and taking ownership of zero-to-one initiatives.

You won’t be a cog in a machine; you’ll lead across product, engineering, GTM, or operations, building internal tools and processes to scale with founder-level energy and ownership.

Qualifications

• Proven experience founding or co-founding a technology company.
• Strong technical background with production code experience.
• Track record of building and shipping products users love.
• Experience hiring, leading, and inspiring small, high-performing teams.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

Responsibilities

• Identify and drive high-leverage opportunities across product, engineering, GTM, or operations.
• Own ambitious, ambiguous problems from zero to shipped.
• Bring founder-level energy and judgment to initiatives.
• Build internal tools, processes, and systems to scale Encord.
• Act as a force multiplier across teams.

Skills

Founding/co-founding a tech company

Technical leadership

Communication & stakeholder mgmt

Product development mindset

Tools

Production code experience

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 former technical founders who want to get back to building. If you've experienced the thrill of 0 to 1 — the chaos, the ownership, the outsized impact — and you're hungry to do it again inside a rocketship, this is the role for you.

At Encord, you won't be a cog in a machine. You'll work directly with the founding team, take on high‑stakes problems, and help shape the trajectory of the company. We don't care which box you fit into — we care about what you're capable of building.

What You’ll Do

• Work closely with the cofounders to identify and drive some of the highest-leverage opportunities across product, engineering, GTM, or operations
• Take ownership of ambitious, ambiguous problems and drive them from zero to shipped
• Bring an entrepreneurial mindset to everything — spotting gaps, moving fast, and making things happen with limited resources
• Build internal tools, processes, and systems that help Encord scale
• Act as a force multiplier across teams, bringing founder-level energy and judgment to whatever you tackle

Who We’re Looking For

• A former founder — ideally technical — who has built and scaled a product or company, and is eager to get back to the early days of 0 to 1
• You may have started and exited your business and is ready to experience the journey again in a new context
• You may not have AI or B2B experience, but you will have excelled at something incredibly challenging that demonstrates your grit and ability to overachieve
• Deeply comfortable with ambiguity — you don't need a job spec to know what needs doing
• A builder at heart who thinks from first principles and moves fast without sacrificing quality
• Someone who takes extreme ownership and thrives without a safety net

Experience Requirements

• Proven experience founding or co‑founding a technology company
• Strong technical background — you've written production code and understand engineering trade-offs
• Track record of building and shipping products that users love
• Experience hiring, leading, and inspiring small, high‑performing teams
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills

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