Product Manager, AI Models

Descript’s vision is to put video in every communicator’s toolkit. Back in the day you needed like six monitors and a bachelor’s degree to edit video. Descript lets you do it by editing docs & slides, and increasingly by just asking AI. In the future, maybe you won’t even need to ask! But building a new way to record or generate (or both!) videos that look & sound good comes with a series of unique design, technology, and business challenges. In other words, we need really good product managers.

As a Product Manager working on AI Models, you’ll be responsible for defining the strategy, owning the roadmap, and helping to evaluate, train, deploy, & improve AI models that solve our users’ problems. We’re a small, flat team. You’ll work closely with a team of world-class PMs, AI researchers, engineers, designers and product marketers who are all driven to do the best work of their careers.

What you’ll do

• Develop a deep understanding of our customers, market, and product opportunities
• Develop a deep understanding of the landscape of modern AI models and conviction on where Descript should build, buy, partner and contribute to the field
• Drive company-wide AI initiatives that have meaningful business & user impact, and become an influential advocate for our AI strategy
• Own and drive the roadmap for AI models at Descript, from idea generation through to execution, evaluation and iteration
• Collaborate with AI research, engineering, design, and other product teams to ship AI models that delight our users and deliver meaningful impact on Descript’s business

Who you are

• You have seen (and shipped) some things: You have 7 or more years of product management experience, preferably with a product of technical complexity that incorporates generative AI models. You can direct your own to do list. You make a ton of progress between check-ins. You won’t be blocked.
• 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 demonstrated experience in doing customer discovery and defining features that solve real problems.
• You are a fog sculptor: There are aspects to our product and its design that do not have real competitors yet. The product intuition and design conventions have not been decided. We need product managers who are attracted to ambiguous and unsolved problems and can sculpt that ambiguity into strategy and magic.
• 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 sweating 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.

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 — with a proven CEO 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, catered lunches, and flexible vacation time. Our headquarters are located in the Mission District of San Francisco, CA. We're looking to hire people who are local and able to join us at the office when needed. We're flexible, and you're an adult—we don't expect or mandate that you're in the office every day. But 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.

The base salary range for this role is $170,000-220,000/year. Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, including prior experience, expertise, and location, and they may vary from the amount above.

Descript’s vision is to put video in every communicator’s toolkit. Back in the day you needed like six monitors and a bachelor’s degree to edit video. Descript lets you do it by editing docs & slides, and increasingly by just asking AI. In the future, maybe you won’t even need to ask! But building a new way to record or generate (or both!) videos that look & sound good comes with a series of unique design, technology, and business challenges. In other words, we need really good product managers.

As a Product Manager working on AI Models, you’ll be responsible for defining the strategy, owning the roadmap, and helping to evaluate, train, deploy, & improve AI models that solve our users’ problems. We’re a small, flat team. You’ll work closely with a team of world-class PMs, AI researchers, engineers, designers and product marketers who are all driven to do the best work of their careers.

What you’ll do

• Develop a deep understanding of our customers, market, and product opportunities
• Develop a deep understanding of the landscape of modern AI models and conviction on where Descript should build, buy, partner and contribute to the field
• Drive company-wide AI initiatives that have meaningful business & user impact, and become an influential advocate for our AI strategy
• Own and drive the roadmap for AI models at Descript, from idea generation through to execution, evaluation and iteration
• Collaborate with AI research, engineering, design, and other product teams to ship AI models that delight our users and deliver meaningful impact on Descript’s business

Who you are

• You have seen (and shipped) some things: You have 7 or more years of product management experience, preferably with a product of technical complexity that incorporates generative AI models. You can direct your own to do list. You make a ton of progress between check-ins. You won’t be blocked.
• 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 demonstrated experience in doing customer discovery and defining features that solve real problems.
• You are a fog sculptor: There are aspects to our product and its design that do not have real competitors yet. The product intuition and design conventions have not been decided. We need product managers who are attracted to ambiguous and unsolved problems and can sculpt that ambiguity into strategy and magic.
• 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 sweating 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.

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 — with a proven CEO 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, catered lunches, and flexible vacation time. Our headquarters are located in the Mission District of San Francisco, CA. We're looking to hire people who are local and able to join us at the office when needed. We're flexible, and you're an adult—we don't expect or mandate that you're in the office every day. But 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.

The base salary range for this role is $170,000-219,000/year. Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, including prior experience, expertise, and location, and they may vary from the amount above.