We are building the next-generation AI-powered platform and web application for easy and fast creation of audio and video content. Building a revolutionary way to record, transcribe, edit, and mix audio and video on the web comes with a series of unique technical challenges and requires solving hard and complex problems.
We are looking for an experienced software engineer with significant video expertise to build a best-in-class video editing and streaming platform to power the core functionality of the app.
What You’ll Do
- Build and optimize high availability, high performance systems to handle petabyte-scale data ingest, processing, and serving
- Provide a useful media platform to AI research and engineering teams to train and integrate AI features that work on media, including multimodal LLMs, video transformation models, and information
- Engage with the open-source media and video engineering community to improve key tools like ffmpeg
- Develop tools to develop, test, benchmark, and debug our video and audio processing systems
- Discover, evaluate, and adopt new technologies that can enhance our services and/or improve our efficiency
- Mentor members on the engineering team, especially when it comes to video and audio technologies
What You Bring
- 5+ years of professional software development experience
- Strong CS fundamentals, backend infrastructure experience, and understanding of digital video technologies, including formats, codecs, and processing tools (e.g. MP4, HVEC, HLS, WebRTC, MPEG-DASH, ffmpeg)
- Self-aware of strengths and seeking to constantly learn and improve
- Strong written and verbal communication
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 $191k- $250k/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 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.
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.
