senior engineer

About the Role

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 ideal candidate thrives in a fast‑moving, high‑ownership environment and is comfortable navigating the ambiguity of bringing research work into an established product.

About the 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.

Responsibilities

• 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 the 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.

Minimum Qualifications

• Experience in deploying and managing AI models in production.
• Experience with large‑volume data pipeline tools such as 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.

Preferred Qualifications (Extra Credit)

• 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.

Salary

Base salary range: $180,000 – $286,000 per year. Final offer amounts will consider prior experience, expertise, location, level, and other factors.

Benefits

• Generous healthcare package
• 401(k) matching program
• Catered lunches
• Flexible vacation time
• Remote and hybrid work options with occasional in‑person collaboration opportunities

About Descript

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 backed by leading investors (OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, Spark Capital). Our headquarters are in the Mission District of San Francisco, CA, and we support both remote and hybrid roles.

Descript is an equal‑opportunity workplace dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive environment