AI leaders rely on Encord to build cutting-edge AI.

At Encord, we believe in empowering employees to shape their own careers. The company fosters a culture of ‘trust and autonomy’, which encourages people to think creatively and outside the box when approaching challenges. We strongly believe that people are the pillars of the company. With employees from over 20 nationalities, we are committed to building a culture that supports and celebrates diversity. For us, we want our people to be their authentic self at work and be driven to take Encord's mission forward.  Rad Ploshtakov was the first employee at Encord and is a testament to how quickly you can progress in a startup. He joined as a Founding Engineer after working as a Software Engineer in the finance industry, and is now our Head of Engineering. Hi Rad! Tell us about yourself, how you ended up in Encord, and what you’re doing. I was born and raised in Bulgaria. I moved to the UK to study a masters in Computing (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) at Imperial College London. I am also a former competitive mathematician and worked in trading as a developer, building systems that operate in single digit microseconds. Then I joined Encord (or Cord, which is how we were known at the time!) as the first hire - I thought the space was really exciting, and Eric and Ulrik are an exceptional duo. I started off as a Founding Engineer and, as our team grew, transitioned to Head of Engineering about a year later. I am responsible for ensuring that as an engineering team we're working on what matters most for our current and future customers - I work closely with everyone to set the overall direction and incorporate values for the team. Nowadays, a lot of my time is also spent on hiring, and on helping build and maintain an environment in which everyone can do their best work. What does a normal day at work look like for you? Working in a startup means no two days are the same! Generally, I would say that my day revolves around translating the co-founders' goals into actionable items for our team to work on - communicating and providing guidance are two important aspects of my role. A typical day includes meeting with customers and prospects, code reviewing, and supporting across different initiatives. Another big part is collaborating with other teams to understand what we want to build and how we are going to build it. Can you tell us a bit about a project that you are currently working on? Broadly speaking, a lot of my last few weeks has been supporting our teams as they set out and execute on their roadmaps. 2023 will be a huge year for us at Encord, and we're moving at a very fast pace, so a lot of my focus recently has been helping us be set up for success. As for specific projects, I'm very excited about all the work our team is doing for our customers. For example, our DICOM annotation tool has recently been named the leading medical imaging annotation tool on the market - which is a huge testament to the work our team has poured into it over the last year. I remember hacking together a first version of our DICOM annotation tool in my first (admittedly mostly sleepless!) weeks at Encord, and seeing how far it's come in just a few months has been one of the most rewarding parts of my last year. What stood out to you about the Encord team when you joined? Many things. When I first met the co-founders (Eric & Ulrik), I was impressed by their unique insights into the challenges that lay ahead for computer vision teams - they can simultaneously visualize strikingly clearly what the next decade will look like, while also being able to execute at mind-boggling speed in the moment, in that direction. I was impressed also by how smart, resourceful and driven they were. By the time I joined, they had been able to build a revenue generating business with dozens of customers - getting to understand deeply the problems that teams were facing and then iterating quickly to build solutions that not even they had thought about. What is it like to work at Encord now? It's a very exciting time to be at Encord. Our customer base has been scaling rapidly, and the feedback loop on the engineering cycle is very short, so we get to see the impact of our work at a very quick pace which is exciting - often going from building specs for a feature, to shipping it, showing it to our customers, and seeing them starting to use it all happen in a span of just a few weeks. A big part of working at Encord is focusing a lot on our customer's success - we always seek out feedback, listen, and apply first principles to the challenges our customers are facing (as well as getting ahead with ones we know they'll be facing soon that they might not be thinking about yet!). Then work on making the product better and better each day. How would you describe the team at Encord now? The best at what they do - also hardworking, very collaborative and always helping and motivating each other. One of our core values is having a growth mentality, and each member of our team has come into the company and built things from the ground up. Everyone has a willingness to roll up their sleeves and make things happen to grow the company. A resulting factor of this is also that it's okay to make mistakes - we are constantly iterating and trying to get 1% better each day. We have big plans for 2023 & are hiring across all teams! ➡️ Click here to see our open positions

Learn more about life at Encord from our Product Design Lead, Mavis Lok! Mavis Lok, or ‘Figma Queen’ as we’d like to call her, thrives in using innovation and creativity to enhance the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) of our products. She listens closely to our customers’ needs, conducts user discovery, and translates insights into tangible and elegant solutions. You will find Mavis collaborating with various teams at Encord (from the Sales and Customer Success teams, to the Product and Engineering teams) to ensure that the product aligns with our business goals and user needs. Hi, Mavis, first question is what inspired you to join Encord? When I was planning the next steps in my career, I knew that I wanted to join an emerging and innovative tech startup. In the process, I stumbled upon Encord - with a pretty big vision of helping companies build better AI models with quality data. A problem that seemed ambitious and compelling.  I had my first chat with Justin [Encord's Head of Product Engineering], and he gave me great insights into the role, the company, and the domain space, which tied nicely with my design experience and what I was looking for in my next role. I was evaluating many companies, and I made sure (and I'd recommend to anyone reading!) to speak to as many employees from the company I could meet. The more people I met from Encord, the more and more eager I became to join the team. Could you tell me a little about what inspired you to pursue a career in product design? Hah, great question! I was previously in creative advertising and was trained as a Creative/Art Director. During my free time, I would participate in advertising competitions where I would pitch ideas for brands, and I’d always maximize my design potential through digital-led ideas. That brought me to work as a Digital Designer and then as a Design Manager, where I got my first glimpse of what it was like to work closely with co-founders, engineers, and designers. The company I was working at, was going through a transition from an agency to a SaaS type business model, and I found many of the skills I'd developed were actually an edge for what product design requires. Having an impact in balancing business needs, and product development challenges whilst creating products that are user-centric and delightful to use - is why I love what I do every day. How would you describe the company culture? I think the people at Encord are what sets us apart. With a team of over 20 nationalities, it’s an incredible feeling to work in an environment where diversity of thought is encouraged.  The grit, ambition, vision, and thoughtfulness of the team are why I enjoy being part of Encord.   What have been some of the highlights of working at Encord? Encord has given me the space to throw light on the impact that design can bring to the company and build more meaningful relationships with the team and, of course, our customers. Another big highlight for me is practicing the notion of coming up with ideas rapidly whilst being able to identify the consequences of every design decision. Brainstorming creativity whilst critically is something I hold dearly in my creative/design life, so it’s definitely a highlight of my day-to-day at Encord. On a side note, Encord is also a fun place to work. Whether it is Friday lunches, monthly social activities, or company off-sites, there are plenty of opportunities to have a good time with the team.  ​​Lastly, what advice would you give someone considering joining Encord? The first thing I would say is you have to be authentic during the interview, and you should also genuinely care about the mission of the company because there is a lot of buzz around the AI space right now - genuine interest lasts longer than hype. I would recommend reading our blogs on the website; it's a great place to start, as you can gain a lot of insight from it. From learning more about our customers, to exploring where our space is headed. We have big plans for 2023 & are hiring across all teams. Find here the roles we are hiring for.

For today’s version of “Behind the Enc-urtain”, we sat down with Shivant, Technical CSM at Encord, to learn more about his journey and day-to-day role. Shivant joined the GTM team when it was a little more than a 10 person task force, and has played a pivotal role in our hypergrowth over the last year. In this post, we’ll learn more about the camaraderie he shares with the team, what culture at Encord is like, and the thrill of working on some pretty fascinating projects with some of today’s AI leaders.  To start us off - could you introduce yourself to the readers, & share more about your journey to Encord? Of course!  I’m originally from South Africa – I studied Business Science and Information Systems, and started my career at one of the leading advisory firms in Cape Town. As a Data Scientist, I worked on everything from technology risk assessments to developing models for lenders around the world. I had a great time - and learned a ton! In 2022 I was presented the opportunity to join a newly-launched program in Analytics at London Business School, one of the best Graduate schools in the world. I decided to pack up my life (quite literally!) and move to London. That year was an insane adventure – and I didn’t know at the time but it prepared me extremely well for what my role post-LBS would be like. It was an extremely diverse and international environment, courses were ever-changing and a good level of challenging, and, as the cliche goes, I met some of my now-best friends! I went to a networking event in the spring, where I met probably two dozen startups that were hiring – I think I walked around basically every booth, and actually missed the Encord one. [NB: it was in a remote corner!]  As I was leaving I saw Lavanya [People Associate at Encord] and Nikolaj [Product Manager at Encord] packing up the booth. We started chatting and fast forward to today… here we are! What was something you found surprising about Encord when you joined? How closely everyone works together. I still remember my first day – my desk-neighbors were Justin [Head of Product Engineering], Eric [Co-founder & CEO] and Rad [Head of Engineering]. Coming from a 5,000 employee organization, I already found that insane! Then throughout the day, AEs or BDRs would pass by and chat about a conversation they had just had with a prospect – and engineers sitting nearby would chip in with relevant features they were working on, or ask questions about how prospects were using our product. It all felt quite surreal. I now realize we operate with extremely fast and tight feedback loops and everyone generally gets exposure to every other area of the company – it’s one of the reasons we’ve been able to grow and move as fast as we have. What’s your favorite part of being a Technical CSM at Encord? The incredibly inspiring projects I get to help our customers work on. When most people think about AI today they mostly think about ChatGPT but, beyond LLMs, companies are working on truly incredible products that are improving so many areas of society. To give an example – on any given day, my morning might start with helping the CTO of a generative AI scale-up improve their text-to-video model, be followed by a call with an AI team at a drone startup who is trying to more accurately detect carbon emissions in a forest, and end with meeting a data engineering team at a large healthcare org who’s working on deploying a more automated abnormality-detector for MRI scans.  I can’t really think of any other role where I’d be exposed to so much of “the future”. It’s extremely fun.  What words would you use to describe the Encord culture? Open and collaborative. We’re one team, and the default for everyone is always to focus on getting to the best outcome for Encord and our customers. Also, agile: the AI space we’re in is moving fast, and we’re able to stay ahead of it all and incorporate cutting-edge technologies into our platform to help our customers – sometimes a few days from it being released by Meta or OpenAI. And then definitely diverse: we’re 60 employees, from 34 different nationalities, which is incredibly cool. I appreciate being surrounded by people from different backgrounds, it helps me see things in ways I wouldn’t otherwise, and has definitely challenged a lot of what I thought was the norm.  What are you most excited re. Encord or the CS team this year?  There’s a lot to be excited about – this will be a huge year for us. We recently opened our San Francisco office to be closer to many of our customers, so I’m extra excited about having a true Encord base in the Bay area and getting to see everyone more regularly in person.  We’re also going to grow the CS team past Fred & I for the first time! We’re looking for both Technical CSMs and Senior CSMs to join the team, both in London and in SF, as well as Customer Support Engineers and ML Solutions Engineers. On the topic of hiring… who do you think Encord would be the right fit for? Who would enjoy Encord the most? In my experience, people who enjoy Encord the most have a strong sense of self-initiative and ambition – they want to achieve big, important outcomes but also realize most of the work to get there is extremely unglamorous and requires no task being “beneath” them. They tend to always approach a problem with the intent of finding a way to get to the solution, and generally get energy from learning and being surrounded by other talented, extremely smart people. Relentlessness is definitely a trait that we all share at Encord. A lot of our team is made up of previous founders, I think that says a lot about our culture.  See you at the next episode of “Behind the Enc-urtain”! And as always, you can find our careers page here😉