Applied Research Scientist, AI Research

Location: San Francisco, CA or Remote, US

Salary: $197,000–$262,500 base salary, plus equity and benefits

Company

Descript builds an AI-powered video and audio editing tool, developing specialized models for editing workflows used by millions of creators.

What you will do

• Build vision-language and multimodal systems that enable AI editing agents to reason over visual and audio project content.
• Design benchmarks and evaluation systems for editorial quality while balancing quality, cost, and latency.
• Build datasets, including synthetic data generation where real examples are not available at scale.
• Train specialized models from scratch or fine-tune existing foundation models.
• Move research prototypes into production in collaboration with agent and engineering teams.
• Identify research directions for future product features and optionally publish at academic venues.

Requirements

• Proven ability to design and implement deep learning algorithms through publications, open-source work, or shipped models.
• Strong programming skills and deep fluency in PyTorch.
• Ability to generate and rapidly evaluate new machine learning ideas, with strong experimental judgment.
• Clear written and verbal communication, including communicating when a research direction is not working.
• A PhD, Master's degree in deep learning or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• At least one of the following: first or lead authorship of an accepted publication at a top venue, or a key role in shipping a production feature where deep learning was central.

Nice to have

• Experience with vision-language models and multimodal understanding.
• Generative modeling for video, audio, or images.
• Post-training, fine-tuning, or reinforcement learning on large foundation models.
• Evaluation systems for generative or agentic outputs with difficult-to-define metrics.
• Experience taking a research idea through to a shipped production feature.

Culture & Benefits

• Research is focused on product capabilities that move from prototype to production.
• Opportunities to publish research are supported but not required.
• Generous healthcare package and 401(k) matching program.
• Catered lunches and flexible vacation time.
• Remote roles include occasional opportunities for in-person collaboration; the company also supports hybrid work.