Research Engineer
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Nov 7, 2026. First seen by Alion on Oct 12, 2026.
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 a Research Engineer to join Encord's ML team. You'll work on robotics, computer vision and multimodal research in data curation, annotation, evaluation and quality control, with successful work going into the core product.
We face a variety of interesting research problems across the full data life-cycle, including annotation, quality control, verification and curation. We are looking to strengthen our team to build upon and extend our market-leading platform. The kind of problems we solve are constantly evolving alongside the needs of our frontier customers, including many of the leading robotics and physical AI teams. Join us as we leverage our massive flow of proprietary data on our journey to develop generalised solutions applicable across diverse multi-modal tasks.
What you'll do
Form hypotheses, design experiments, and drive original research on open problems from leading robotics and AI customers
Research and prototype agentic workflows which can handle multimodal inputs and diverse customer ontologies
Advance our work on data curation and model evaluation
Tackle egocentric video understanding, from captioning to deeper 3d understanding
Build working prototypes to test ideas end to end, then partner with our ML systems and Product Engineering teammates to bring them into the platform
Help shape our longer-term research direction and bring the most relevant ideas from the field back to the team
Publish research papers and present your work at conferences and workshops
Who we're looking for
A builder with a research mindset. You can take an open-ended problem, form a hypothesis and get to a working prototype without a detailed spec.
A first-principles problem solver. You lean on strong fundamentals rather than surface-level familiarity with the latest trends.
A big-picture thinker. You're excited by ambitious, longer-term problems and know how to break them into steps.
A multiplier. You raise the level of the team around you by shaping research direction, mentoring others and turning findings into decisions.
Experience requirements
A PhD in computer vision, machine learning or a related field, or equivalent applied research experience
A strong background in computer vision and multimodal ML, whether in traditional CV, modern VLMs and embedding models, or both
Clear evidence of independent research, such as publications, a thesis, open-source work or applied research where you owned the original contribution
Solid mathematical foundations in statistics, probability and linear algebra
Strong Python and PyTorch skills, and experience running experiments end-to-end
A genuine interest in data-centric AI: curation, evaluation and data quality
Bonus: experience applying LLM-based agents to visual tasks, or working with video, 3D or other complex data types
We’ll start reviewing applications from 1 November 2026. It may take a little while to hear back, but every application will get proper consideration.
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 & 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.