Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure in London

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 great engineers with experience building the backend of highly performant systems that can handle very large volumes of unstructured and structured data. Customers use our platform to store, query, analyse, and manipulate billions of items of data — and we need to ensure these operations are fast and reliable at massive scale.

For this role we are particularly interested in engineers with experience in both traditional relational database systems like PostgreSQL and column-oriented analytics systems such as ClickHouse, who have worked on large‑scale systems in industries where reliability and performance are critical. You'll join a small, highly collaborative group at a crucial stage of accelerated development, operating with a high degree of autonomy and crafting performant, reliable, and maintainable solutions to challenging technical problems.

What you'll do

• Build and maintain highly performant backend systems handling billions of items of structured and unstructured data.
• Work across relational and columnar database systems to ensure fast, reliable query and storage operations at scale.
• Take end‑to‑end ownership of projects, from architectural decisions through to deployment, monitoring, and measuring user impact.
• Work autonomously to drive projects forward while collaborating closely with a lean, high‑trust team.
• Tackle complex infrastructure problems with simple, well‑crafted solutions.
• Take initiative, be proactive in problem‑solving, and continuously seek improvements.

Who we're looking for

• Experienced: you've seen a lot and built a lot — personally developed and maintained systems from scratch, with a deep understanding of the trade‑offs involved in building reliable, performant software at speed.
• Impact‑driven: you want your work to have a tangible outcome for people and aren't satisfied by products that don't see the light of day.
• A builder: you enjoy all aspects of building a complete product and love problem‑solving from first principles.
• Comfortable with uncertainty: happy to tackle problems without a predefined solution, and excited to make decisions autonomously as you go.
• A team player: you contribute your best work and actively help others do the same — you enjoy levelling up those around you.

Experience requirements

• Strong backend engineering experience with production‑grade systems at large scale.
• Hands‑on experience with PostgreSQL and ClickHouse (or similar columnar analytics systems).
• Proficiency in Python; experience with Rust is a plus.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and GCP.
• Prior experience in industries where reliability and performance are mission‑critical.

Tech stack

• Backend: Python
• Frontend: TypeScript and React
• Deployment: Kubernetes
• Infrastructure: GCP
• Machine learning: PyTorch, CUDA, Ray

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.