Head of Data

Key Skills

Aartificial intelligence, Effective communication skills, Finance, Machine learning techniques

Job Description

Head of Data

About the Role

As Head of Data at Descript, you will drive a transformative data strategy, overseeing the entire data stack—from infrastructure to insights—to foster a data-driven culture and accelerate AI-powered product development. As a key leader, you’ll shape how data unlocks value, deepens customer insights, and fuels innovation, balancing empirical rigor with strategic intuition. Your impact will span the organization, from enhancing AI-first products to driving measurable business outcomes.

What You’ll Do

• Architect a world-class data ecosystem – Design and maintain scalable data infrastructure that transforms raw data into actionable insights.
• Drive strategic decision-making – Leverage data to identify opportunities, guide company strategy, and support long-term growth.
• Champion a data-driven culture – Advocate for data-informed decisions across business and product teams while integrating creativity and intuition.
• Lead and grow a high-performing team – Hire, mentor, and develop data engineers, analysts, and scientists, fostering a culture of innovation and ownership.
• Collaborate cross-functionally – Partner with product, finance, marketing, and sales teams to ensure data-driven insights inform critical decisions.
• Shape technical strategy – Align data infrastructure, tools, and processes with business goals for scalability and efficiency.
• Advance AI and machine learning – Partner with AI teams to improve data quality, manage large-scale training datasets, and enhance performance monitoring.

Who You Are

• 10+ years in data roles, including 5+ years in leadership.
• Proven ability to turn complex data into clear, strategic insights.
• Strong communicator, aligning executive, product, and go-to-market teams.
• Skilled at balancing data-driven decision-making with qualitative judgment.
• Passionate about fostering a collaborative, high-performing, and inclusive culture.
• Experience building and scaling data teams in high-growth tech companies.
• Hands-on expertise in modern data architectures, cloud-based warehouses, ETL pipelines, and big data ecosystems.

Compensation

• Base salary: $224,000 - $276,000/year
• Final offer will consider experience, expertise, and location.

About Descript

Descript is redefining video and audio editing for the AI era—making it intuitive, powerful, and accessible. Backed by OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, and Spark Capital, we’re a fast-growing team of 150 with the resources and product-market fit to scale rapidly.

Why Join Us?

• Competitive healthcare benefits
• Catered lunches
• Flexible vacation policy
• Hybrid work flexibility in our San Francisco HQ

At Descript, we believe in the power of diverse perspectives. We are an equal opportunity employer, committed to building an inclusive team where everyone can thrive.