Head of Data

Our vision at Descript is to build the next-generation platform for fast and easy creation of audio and video content. We are trusted by some of the world's top podcasters and influencers, as well as businesses like BBC, ESPN, HubSpot, Shopify, and The Washington Post for communicating via video. We've raised $100M from leading investors such as the OpenAI Startup fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, and Spark Capital.

About the role

In this role, you will lead a transformative journey, overseeing the entire data stack—from infrastructure to insights—to build a lasting data-driven culture and accelerate AI-first product development. As part of our leadership team, you will shape how we use data to unlock value, deepen customer insights, and drive innovation—balancing empirical evidence with strategic intuition. Your impact will extend across the organization, from advancing AI-first products to driving measurable business results.

What You’ll Do

• Design an integrated data ecosystem: Build and maintain a data architecture that seamlessly collects, stores, and transforms raw data into meaningful insights.
• Shape company strategy with data: Use data to identify opportunities, guide strategic decisions, and support long-term growth.
• Champion data-driven decision-making: Promote the use of data in business and product decisions while recognizing the role of creativity and intuition.
• Lead and develop a high-performing data team: Recruit, mentor, and support data engineers, analysts, and scientists, fostering a culture of growth, innovation, and ownership.
• Collaborate across teams: Work closely with product, finance, marketing, and sales to ensure data-driven insights inform key decisions and drive impact.
• Shape technical strategy: Align data infrastructure, tools, and processes with business goals to ensure scalability and efficiency.
• Advance AI and machine learning efforts: Partner with AI teams to improve data quality, manage large-scale training datasets, and refine performance monitoring systems.

Who you are

• You have 10+ years of experience in data, including at least 5 years in leadership roles.
• You excel at turning complex data into clear, actionable insights and can confidently advocate for strategic decisions.
• You communicate effectively across executive, product, and go-to-market teams, ensuring alignment and impact.
• You know when data should drive decisions and when qualitative factors or intuition should play a role.
• You are passionate about nurturing a collaborative, inclusive, and high-performing culture that values curiosity, excellence, and continuous learning.
• You have a proven track record of building and scaling data teams in high-growth tech companies.
• You have hands-on experience across the data stack, from infrastructure to insights, with deep expertise in modern data architectures, cloud-based warehouses, ETL pipelines, and big data ecosystems.

The base salary range for this role is $224,000- $276,000/year. Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, including prior experience, expertise, location, and may vary from the amount above.

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.