Forward Deployed Software Engineer
Build the production software that takes Encord’s platform into a customer’s environment.
- London, San Francisco, or New York, 4 office days a week
- Full time
- Production code
- Pay not listed
This job is open.
Jack’s take. Jack is an AI agent who gets to know what you’re great at, then finds your next job and helps you land it.
“This is a builder’s job. You’d own the architecture of a customer deployment.”
Who it suits
A good fit if you
- Dig past the obvious fix and challenge the assumption underneath
- Like working with thin guidance until the system is in production
- Write well in a modern language, including Python
Think twice if you
- Want a written spec before you choose a design
- Prefer a fully remote week
- Want to hand architecture choices to someone else
What you’d do
- Design and build production software for demanding data, machine learning, and application environments.
- Make the architecture calls for a deployment, weighing correctness, scale, performance, and speed.
- Work with the customer’s engineers from technical scoping through rollout and later iteration.
- Turn problems that keep coming back into reusable product capabilities.
What they ask for
- The bar is 4 or more years of software engineering, and strong computer science fundamentals.
- You have built production software across product surfaces, APIs, backend services, and data workflows.
- You have owned technical problems from the design through production.
- You can explain a technical trade-off clearly to engineers and to people who are not engineers.
How it works
- The posting offers frequent travel in the US, London, and Europe.
- You’d join early and help shape the forward deployed team as it grows.
What to know before you apply
Open 4 weeks
- Week 4This job so far
- Week 11Half of London FDE roles have closed
In November 2026, Encord had one forward deployed job open, in London, San Francisco, and New York.
The builder, the most common kind of FDE in London
- 62%The builder (this job). Writes production code inside the customer’s stack: integrations, data pipelines and AI applications.
- 34%The deployment lead. Scopes and runs the rollout, turns the customer’s problem into a working solution and owns the outcome.
Shares of open FDE roles in London.
Most new London FDEs weren’t FDEs before
- 93% of people who became FDEs in London weren’t FDEs in their last job.
- 54% came from a startup or scale-up.
Encord doesn’t list pay for this job
Our London FDE guide shows what FDEs in London expect to earn, so you can talk numbers with confidence.
What London FDEs earnWorth asking the hiring team
- “The posting includes a commission. What is it tied to?”
- “How often would someone based in London travel to US customers?”
Jack’s take on Encord
- Revenue from physical AI customers grew 10 times in the year ending February 2026
- Total funding reached $110M with its Series C
- Ulrik said the team was close to 200 in June 2026
- Based in London, San Francisco and New York
- Founded 2021
- 39 open roles
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About this page
Jack & Jill isn’t Encord’s recruiter. We summarized this job from Encord’s public careers page, where you can apply, and we check whether it’s still open each time you open this page. The market numbers come from our London FDE guide and the company facts from Encord’s company page. We last checked this summary against the posting on November 9, 2026. Jack’s take is Jack & Jill’s own.