Former Technical Founders

Encord; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive equity & pay

Accelerated growth opportunities

In-person culture: 4 days/week

Team lunches & dinners

Learning & development budget

Comprehensive health, dental, vision

Paid vacation (US) and holidays

Frequent travel opportunities

Job summary

Encord is seeking a former founder to re-enter the build phase with a rocketship team in San Francisco. You’ll own high-impact problems, ship products end-to-end, and shape the company’s trajectory with founder-level energy and judgment.

You won’t be a cog in a machine—you’ll work directly with the founders, influence product, engineering, and GTM, and help scale Encord to enterprise customers across industries.

Qualifications

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

Responsibilities

• Identify and drive high-leverage opportunities across product, engineering, GTM, or operations.
• Own ambitious, ambiguous problems and ship them from zero to shipped.
• Bring founder-level energy and judgment to cross-functional work.
• Build internal tools, processes, and systems to scale the company.
• Collaborate closely with the founding team to shape Encord's trajectory.

Skills

Founder experience

Technical background

Ownership mindset

Ambition & drive

Ability to ship fast

Job description

About us

We're solving AI's hardest problem: alignment.

Encord is the data layer for Physical AI and enterprise, serving as core infrastructure for 300+ of the world's leading AI teams, including Woven by Toyota, Hitachi, Skydio, AbbVie and Dyna, Walden and Agility Robotics. From autonomous vehicles and robotics to sports and healthcare, we're solving AI's hardest problem: turning complex, real-world data into production-ready intelligent systems.

We're a team of founders, scientists, quants, researchers, and former Olympians, who’ve helped build some of the most successful companies in Silicon Valley, and alumni of MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, and Imperial. We've raised $110M from legendary technology investors, early backers of companies like Databricks, ElevenLabs and Vercel, and we're growing at an extraordinary pace.

We're looking for exceptional people who want to help build a category-defining company, operating with high urgency and taking real ownership to help shape the future of AI.

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 are 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
• Clear, accelerated growth opportunities as the company scales rapidly
• Strong in-person culture: 4 days/week
• Daily team lunches & dinners
• Annual learning & development budget
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
• US employees: 18 paid vacation days plus US public holidays
• UK employees: 25 paid vacation days plus UK public holidays
• Frequent travel opportunities across the U.S., London, and Europe
• Bi-annual company offsites in & monthly socials

Operating principles

High agency

You see something broken, you fix it or find the person who can. We celebrate the people who solve 90% of a problem before anyone asks.

Build with care & urgency

We bear-hug the customer. Former founders and people from fast-moving, high-stakes environments thrive here.

Self-aware & hungry

We stay warm, self-aware, and genuinely hungry. We elevate our peers, and ego doesn't last long.

Invent in real time

We move toward the ambiguity. We’re pragmatic, resourceful, energized by the fact that there's no playbook.

If you're looking to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who push you to be better, we'd love to meet you.