Descript's script-based editing features are at the heart of why creators trust us for their highest-stakes content. Product launches. Client interviews. Marketing campaigns. Content that represents them to their audiences.
As Lead Product Manager of the Narrative Editing team, you'll own how users capture, edit, and perfect their stories. You'll shape the script-first editing that makes video as simple as a document, the recording and writing tools that let users create without leaving Descript, and the AI regeneration features that make edits feel seamless and natural.
This is an opportunity to shape features that professional creators depend on while working with cutting-edge AI, a product users love, and a small, collaborative team where your impact is immediate and visible.
What you’ll do- Develop a deep understanding of our customers, their creative goals, and the evolving AI video landscape — and use those insights to guide the editor roadmap
- Bring Descript's taste for great video into interactions and defaults, so creators naturally produce polished, professional work
- Continuously expand our editing capabilities with frontier AI technology by partnering with our AI Research team, launching features like video regeneration and automatic speaker identification
- Own the recording, script generation, and translation flows that help users achieve their end-to-end video workflows directly in Descript
- Ensure Descript scales reliably for larger teams and more complex workflows
- You’ve built deceptively powerful tools: You have 5 or more years of product management experience shipping creative tools or workflow products that feel simple enough for everyone, but scale to handle sophisticated use cases. You are a systems-minded product thinker who excels at designing intuitive experiences for complex, end-to-end workflows.
- You start with the customer: Plenty of “AI products” start with the technology and they all suck. You care deeply about understanding customers, and have experience in doing customer discovery and defining features that solve real problems.
- You are a fog sculptor: There are aspects to our editor and its design that do not have real competitors yet. The product intuition and design conventions have not been decided. You are attracted to ambiguous problems, know how to ask smart questions, and translate ideas into action.
- You care about craft: Our product is not a hype machine that runs on empty promises and vaporware. We think our product will be successful because people love to use it. That means you sweat the details. But without the sweat, because you aren’t stressed out.
- You are funny, creative, maybe kind of weird: Ok, this isn’t a hard requirement but Descript is kind of a quirky place and the people who love it tend to like that about working here. So, just want to drop a hint early on. Also, the sense of humor is important because even though we take our work seriously it’s still just, like, video creation and editing. We aren’t flying rockets into space so let’s all have a good time.
The base salary range for this role is $225,000 - $290,000. Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, including prior experience, expertise, location, level, 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 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, 401k matching program, catered lunches, and flexible vacation time. Our headquarters are located in the Mission District of San Francisco, CA. We're hiring for a mix of remote roles and hybrid roles. For those who are remote, we have a handful of opportunities throughout the year for in person collaboration. For our hybrid roles, we're flexible, and you're an adult—we don't expect or mandate that you're in the office every day. 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.
Skills Required
- 5 or more years of product management experience
- Experience shipping creative tools or workflow products
- Experience designing intuitive experiences for complex, end-to-end workflows
- Strong customer discovery and feature-definition experience
- Systems-minded product thinking
- Ability to work effectively with AI Research teams and frontier AI technology
- Product intuition and comfort working on ambiguous problems
- Strong attention to product craft and detail
- Creative personality and sense of humor
Descript Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Descript and has not been reviewed or approved by Descript.
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Healthcare Strength — Healthcare coverage is comprehensive for employees and dependents, offering medical, dental, and vision with both HMO and PPO options. This breadth is positioned as a primary strength of the package.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time off is described as flexible or unlimited with paid holidays, encouraging employees to take needed time without strict caps. This supports work-life balance in both remote and on-site setups.
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Retirement Support — A 401(k) with employer matching is provided to bolster long-term financial wellness. This sits alongside core health and PTO benefits as part of a solid foundational package.
Descript Insights
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.
