Senior Engineer - High Performance Data Systems

About Encord

Encord is the universal data layer for AI. Our platform indexes, curates, annotates and evaluates multimodal data across the full AI lifecycle, from development to production, for 300+ AI teams including Woven by Toyota, AXA, UiPath and Zipline.

Encord was founded by former computer scientists, physicists and quants who saw first-hand how poor tooling for training data slows AI progress. We're a Series C company backed by CRV and Y Combinator, with 150+ people across London, San Francisco and New York.

The role

Most engineers never get to redesign core infrastructure for the next 100x of scale. On Foundations, that's the job.

AI teams are generating video, images, 3D sensor data and documents faster than anyone's systems can keep up. Help us build the high-performance data systems behind the AI data platform for robotics and beyond.

You'll join Foundations, the backend backbone of Encord. We build the reliable, scalable, fast systems every other team and every customer runs on. The work sits deep in distributed and data-intensive systems: storage, indexing, querying and processing multimodal data at a scale few companies ever reach.

The timing is rare. A year ago we were a team of 100; now we're over 150 and still accelerating, driven by massive demand. We are building the team to unlock our next orders of magnitude of scale and capability.

What you'll do

• Own significant projects in our data systems end to end: design, architecture, deployment, monitoring and measuring the impact you made
• Build distributed systems that stay fast and correct under load, and reason carefully about every way they can fail
• Shape performant protocols and APIs, that customers build directly on top of
• Find simple solutions to complex domains at scale, and know when boring technology wins
• Raise the bar for everyone around you through code reviews, pairing and sharing what you know

Why engineers join Foundations

• Scale that's genuinely hard. Multimodal AI data is big, messy and growing fast. You'll solve problems most backend engineers only read about.
• Real ownership. You'll own whole systems, not tickets, and the architectural calls are yours to make.
• Work that ships. Your systems power 300+ AI teams, including Woven by Toyota, AXA, UiPath and Zipline.
• Long-term thinking. A team that plans 24 months out and gives you room to build things properly.
• The right moment. A Series C company growing fast, early enough that your decisions shape the platform for years.

Who we're looking for

• You've seen and built a lot. 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
• You combine rigorous engineering with ruthless prioritisation to ship efficient and correct systems quickly.
• 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
• You understand that being a member of a high-performing team requires two things. You contribute your best work and help others contribute their best. You'll always lend a helping hand when needed and level up those around you

Experience requirements

• Fluency in at least one high level (Python, Typescript), and one imperative statically typed (Rust, C++, Java, Go, or other)
• Solid grounding in distributed systems concepts (databases, replication, partitioning, queuing, caching, consistency) and how they behave under load
• Deep understanding of CS fundamentals, data structures and algorithms
• Experience owning services in production and improving quality through code reviews, testing, rollout and monitoring

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