Engineering Manager, Agent

Job Overview

The Engineering Manager will lead product and technical execution for Descript’s Agent team, with a primary focus in 2026 on innovation, feature development, and improvements to its agentic video editing experience. The role combines people management, technical judgment, product strategy, cross-functional leadership, and rapid experimentation with AI-powered systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage team priorities, align stakeholders, adapt plans as new information emerges, and maintain a high standard for delivery.
• Connect customer needs, product vision, and technical realities while working closely with Product, Design, and AI Research.
• Set clear priorities and make technical and product tradeoffs that support team outcomes.
• Mentor and develop engineers while fostering continuous learning and high performance.
• Create stretch opportunities for individual contributors, provide clear feedback, and address underperformance when necessary.
• Improve project management and engineering processes to support predictable, reliable, and sustainable execution.
• Guide architectural decisions and evaluate design tradeoffs.
• Address technical debt that limits execution and help ensure delivery of reliable, high-quality systems.
• Act as a player-coach who can build with the team while helping define how AI-native development supports rapid prototyping and execution.

Agent & AI Product Focus

• Improve the product experience for agentic video editing interactions, including prompt templates, chat-based workflows, user feedback, and capabilities such as chat history.
• Drive rapid, data-informed experimentation around model and routing choices, pricing, agent harness and tool design, and token optimization.
• Strengthen agent quality evaluation by using product data and user signals to improve evaluations and product analysis methods.
• Partner with AI Research on exploratory improvements involving context-management strategies, reinforcement learning, new model development, and multimodal approaches.
• Help improve agent infrastructure as underlying AI models and capabilities continue to evolve.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience.
• At least 2+ years of engineering management experience delivering complex, cross-functional product work with high velocity and quality.
• Experience hiring, developing, and retaining strong engineering talent and building collaborative, high-performing teams.
• Strong technical background with the judgment to guide architecture, evaluate tradeoffs, and maintain engineering quality without needing to be hands-on every day.
• Ability to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience collaborating closely with Product, Design, and Research partners.
• Ability to plan on a 12+ month horizon while aggressively reprioritizing as new information becomes available.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-changing and ambiguous environment with strong ownership and a bias toward action.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building AI agents, developing evaluation systems, or leading teams that build LLM-powered products.
• Experience building creative tools or frequent experience using creative media tools.

Compensation

The base salary range for this role is $222,431–$261,684 per year. Descript states that final offer amounts may vary based on factors including prior experience, expertise, location, and level.

Benefits

• Healthcare benefits.
• 401(k) matching program.
• Catered lunches.
• Flexible vacation time.
• For remote employees, opportunities for in-person collaboration throughout the year.

Work Arrangement

This role may be based in San Francisco, California, or performed remotely within the United States. Descript states that its remote employees may have several opportunities during the year for in-person collaboration.

The Agent team’s management peers and direct reports are based in San Francisco, New York, and across the United States and Canada.

Important Application Instruction

When applying, Descript instructs candidates to use the word “analog” as the first word in their cover letter.