Our vision is to build the next generation platform to enable easy and fast creation of audio and video content powered by cutting-edge AI. Building a revolutionary way to record, transcribe, edit and mix spoken audio and video comes with a series of unique challenges and requires solving hard and complex problems. Learn more about how we're building Descript from one of our Engineers.
Though we might not be actively hiring for all teams at this time, you can take a sneak peek into what engineering teams exist today.
This role can be remote in the US or based in the SF Bay Area.
Technical Challenges at Descript
- Build best-in-class audio & video recording technology that works on web, desktop, and (eventually) mobile
- Design and build new tools for video editing that give users the same kind of “magic” that they’ve become used to for audio editing in Descript
- Reduce the the latency of multi-user collaboration to meet the standard set by other web-based collaborative tools
- Make Descript a web-first app by migrating systems that rely on native/Desktop integrations
- Improve the app’s performance during editing to make Descript’s performance indistinguishable from native competitors
- Architect a scalable backend infrastructure to quickly upload, process, and store large media files
- Build & maintain standards for interoperability among Descript & 3rd party tools
What You’ll Do
- Lead initiatives that impact the larger Engineering org and company, as well as own building and shipping new features across all levels of the stack (frontend and backend)
- Take shared ownership of the product process, and collaborate with product and design teams on crafting great user experiences
- Write high-quality testable code that's functional, long-term maintainable, and performant
- Provide mentorship, including to your more senior counterparts in your particular areas of expertise
- Contribute to high-level architectural decisions, and help to design scalable and efficient systems
What You Bring
- 7+ years of professional software development experience
- Experience in leading large scale projects involving complex architecture and scalable solutions
- Proficiency in modern technologies such as Typescript/Javascript/React/node.js/Go/Python
- Strong CS fundamentals and experience with web technologies (HTML/JS/CSS) and REST APIs
- Strong written and verbal communication
- Customer obsession - you care about providing a good user experience and ensure you fully understand user needs before diving into engineering solutions
- Good judgment in making tradeoffs to balance short-term needs with investing in long term foundation
- Self aware of strengths, and seeking to constantly learn and improve
Nice to Have
- Experience building creative tools
- Experience building and optimizing single-page web applications
At our current size and stage, we embrace a flat organizational structure and value the expertise and contributions of every team member. As such, we have a unified job title for our engineering roles where everyone, including those with Staff-level scope, is considered a Software Engineer. While titles may not change, we are actively seeking senior and above Software Engineers to join our team.
The base salary range for this role is $160,000- $230,000/year. Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, including prior experience, expertise, location, and may vary from the amount above.
Descript is building a simple, intuitive, fully-powered editing tool for video and audio — an editing tool built for the age of AI. We are a team of 150 — with a proven CEO and the backing of some of the world's greatest investors (OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, Spark Capital).
Descript is the special company that's in possession of both product market fit and the raw materials (passionate user community, great product, large market) for growth, but is still early enough that each new employee has a measurable influence on the direction of the company.
Benefits include a generous healthcare package, catered lunches, and flexible vacation time. Our headquarters are located in the Mission District of San Francisco, CA. We're looking to hire people who are local and able to join us at the office when needed. We're flexible, and you're an adult—we don't expect or mandate that you're in the office every day. But we do believe there are valuable and serendipitous moments of discovery and collaboration that come from working together in person.
Descript is an equal opportunity workplace—we are dedicated to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status. We believe in actively building a team rich in diverse backgrounds, experiences, and opinions to better allow our employees, products, and community to thrive.
Top Skills
What We Do
Descript builds simple and powerful collaborative tools for new media creators. We strive to eliminate the tedious work that often stands between an idea and its expression, so that creators can focus on developing their craft instead of their usage of tools.
Descript is a next generation digital media platform that offers a new "engine" that lets you edit audio by editing text (instead of waveforms).
That means it does transcription (both automated and human-powered, whichever you prefer), but more interestingly, it lets you move the audio around by simply editing the transcript.
If you're new to editing audio, you'll find it far easier - it's basically like using a word processor. If you're experienced, Descript is faster than waveform editing - and more fun.
If you work with voice audio (as opposed to music), Descript is what the future looks like...join us and change the world.
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