Senior Software Engineer, Descript
AI Platform and Enablement
$180-286k
AI video & podcast editor
Open for applications
AI video & podcast editor
101-200 employees
Open for applications
$180-286k
101-200 employees
Company mission
To make it easy for anyone o record, edit, and share any video.
Role
Who you are
- The ideal candidate thrives in a fast-moving, high-ownership environment and is comfortable navigating the ambiguity of bringing research work into an established product
- Experience in deploying and managing AI models in production
- Experience with the tools of large volume data pipelines like spark, flume, dask, etc
- Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) and container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes)
- Knowledge of DevOps and MLOps best practices
- Strong problem-solving abilities and excellent communication skills
- If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification above, please apply anyways
Desirable
- Experience with generative AI models
- Familiarity with audio and video processing
- Knowledge of Python, C/C++, CUDA, and experience profiling GPU performance and distributed training runs
- Experience with machine learning frameworks like PyTorch, TensorFlow or similar
What the job involves
- We're building a next-generation AI-powered platform and web application for creating audio and video content quickly and easily
- This involves developing a revolutionary way to record, transcribe, edit, and mix audio and video on the web using state-of-the-art AI models—a challenge that requires solving complex technical problems. We're hiring a senior engineer to join our AI Platform and Enablement team
- The team’s objective is to support integrating cutting-edge first-party models (developed by our in-house AI Research team) and third-party/open source AI models into the Descript product
- Build, maintain, and standardize third-party model integrations, including consulting for other engineering teams with AI model integration needs
- Design, implement, and maintain our AI infrastructure supporting our machine learning life cycle, including data ingestion pipelines, training developer experience and infrastructure, evaluation frameworks, and deployments / GPU infrastructure
- Collaborate with Product Managers, Research Engineers, and AI Researchers to understand their infrastructure needs and ensure our AI systems are robust, scalable, and efficient
- Optimize and scale our models and algorithms for efficient inference
- Deploy, monitor, and manage AI models in production
Application process
- We get an extremely high volume of applications and it can be hard to standout with just a Resume. In lieu of a cover letter, please consider attaching a link to a short video or writing a short note here about what in particular interests you about Descript or this role
Our take
The rise of digital content has made video and audio creation more important than ever, but producing polished media can still be quite complex. Descript makes editing accessible to anyone, simplifying recording, editing, and publishing. And its platform empowers over 7M users to bring ideas to life without needing advanced technical skills.
Descript's standout feature is its AI co-editor, Underlord, which lets users create and edit videos just by describing what they want,. It can generate rough cuts, add visuals and B-roll, apply AI effects, and format content for social media. While many creators are still wary of AI in content creation, Descript has built its tools to augment human creativity, giving users control while handling the heavy lifting.
Serving millions of creators and businesses worldwide, Descript keeps innovating with AI features that learn from user input. By combining intuitive tools with responsible AI, the platform is helping content creators work faster and smarter, reshaping video and audio production while keeping the creative vision firmly in human hands.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
30% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Oct 2022
$50m
SERIES C
Jan 2021
$30m
SERIES B
Total funding: $100m
Company benefits
- Health: We’ve got you covered with medical, dental, and vision benefits for all employees and their dependents. These include HMO and PPO healthcare plans
- Time off: Paid holidays are a given, but you can also expect flexible time off. Feel comfortable to take the time you need, when you need it.
- Parental leave: New parents receive paid parental leave to spend quality time with their expanding families.
- Home-office stipend: Get your work-from-home setup ready with our home-office stipend.
- Retirement: We offer a variety of retirement plans, including employer matching.
- Free food & refreshments: Come say hey! Visit our office for free lunch, snacks, and drinks.
- Destination off-sites: No matter where you work, you’ll get to know your team. We host two annual gatherings: a company-wide off-site and a team-specific off-site.
Company HQ
Civic Center, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Laura Burkhauser
(CEO)Laura joined Descript in 2023 as a VP of Product and became CEO in 2025. Prior to this, she was a Director of Product Management at Twitter and Rent The Runway.
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