Forward Deployed Software Engineer - Build Production AI

Encord; New York, San Francisco (NY, CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

London office culture

Flexible PTO

Learning budget

Health/dental/vision coverage

Travel opportunities US/London/Europe

Offsites and team socials

Job summary

Encord is seeking a Forward Deployed Software Engineer to join our engineering team. You will work directly with customers to design and deploy production software across APIs, data workflows, and backend services, shaping solutions in real-world environments.

You'll own deployments end-to-end, moving fast in a high-growth startup, and communicating trade-offs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders while contributing to product and roadmap.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of software engineering with strong CS fundamentals.
• Experience building production software across the stack.
• Strong system design judgment and architecture decisions.
• Proficient in a modern language; Python is a plus.
• Own technical problems end to end, from design to production.
• Product judgment, communication, and stakeholder management.
• Experience working with users or external teams is a plus.
• Bonus: experience in high-growth startups / ML/data products.

Responsibilities

• Design and build production software for complex data, ML, and application environments.
• Own system design decisions for deployments, balancing correctness, scalability, performance, and speed.
• Work directly with customers and their engineering teams to define the right technical solution.
• Build across the stack from APIs and data workflows to backend systems and product surfaces.
• 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 to stakeholders.
• Operate with high autonomy and own problems end to end.
• Feed deployment insights back into Product and Engineering, shaping the FDSE function.

Skills

CS fundamentals

Python

System design

End-to-end ownership

Customer interaction

Job description

Encord is seeking a Forward Deployed Software Engineer to join our engineering team. You will work directly with customers to design and deploy production software across APIs, data workflows, and backend services, shaping solutions in real-world environments.

You'll own deployments end-to-end, moving fast in a high-growth startup, and communicating trade-offs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders while contributing to product and roadmap.