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Lead Design Engineer

Descript San Francisco, CA or Remote Full-time Product & Design Posted Jun 29, 2026
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What it’s like to work at Descript

AI-powered video & audio editing · San Francisco

3.9
Employee Rating
3.8
Work-Life Balance
7
Open Roles
eng-drivenship-fastflatmany-hatsremote

What employees love

  • Talented and collaborative team
  • Remote-friendly with great async culture

What could be better

  • Direction can change quickly
  • Some roles stretch thin across projects
View full Descript culture profile →

About the Role

About the role

You’ve probably gone by many titles in your day: designer, engineer, creative technologist — today you may just be calling yourself a product builder. Come help us build the next great version of our app, which is changing the way people edit video.

Here, you’ll go by the title Lead Design Engineer, report to the head of Product Design, and collaborate closely with our Builder Experience team in our Engineering organization. You’ll work at the intersection of code that ships to prod and design decisions that delights users.

Your impact will be felt everywhere: on our design system, in product, and every once in a while in web experiences built to truly show off how creative our brand can be. You’ll also be a mentor to designers at various stages of their journey into hybrid ways of working.

What you’ll do

The must-haves

This is a unique role that may have followed many career paths, but these are the things we’re not going to budge on:

The technical stuff

The person who fills this role needs to work on more than vibes alone (although everyone is encouraged to automate and vibe what they can here). These are the core technical skills this person will need to be successful in this role:

The flexible bits

As an excellent fit for this role, you probably:

In exchange…

The base salary range for this role is $247,000 - 280,000. Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, including prior experience, expertise, location, level, and may vary from the amount above.

When applying, please put the word "analog" as the first word in your cover letter.

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 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.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the work-life balance like at Descript?
Descript has a work-life balance score of 3.8/5 based on employee reviews. This is about average for the AI/tech industry.
What is Descript’s culture like?
Descript is characterized by these culture values: eng-driven, ship-fast, flat, many-hats, remote. Based on employee reviews, the company has an overall rating of 3.9/5. Talented and collaborative team
How many open roles does Descript have?
Descript currently has 7 open roles across departments including engineering, product, sales, and more. Roles are refreshed daily from their careers page.
Is this role remote-friendly?
This role is located in San Francisco, CA or Remote. Descript is a remote-friendly company, with many roles available for remote work.
Apply for this role at Descript →