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.