Careers

Engineering Manager, Desktop

Engineering · Full-time · San Francisco; New York

Apply

Our mission is to automate coding. The first step in our journey is to build the best tool for professional programmers, using a combination of inventive research, design, and engineering. Our organization is very flat, and our team is small and talent dense. We particularly like people who are truth-seeking, passionate, and creative. We enjoy spirited debate, crazy ideas, and shipping code.

About the Role

You will lead the Desktop team at Cursor, owning the product and engineering experience that millions of developers rely on every day. This team owns the UI, core features, and client-side architecture of the Cursor desktop application, working across product, design, infrastructure, and platforms to deliver a fast, stable, and seamless experience.

This is a highly cross-functional role. The Desktop team sits at the center of many of Cursor’s most important product investments, especially the cross-cutting features that define how humans and agents work together across environments like local, worktrees, remote ssh, and cloud. When developers open Cursor, they expect it to feel instant, reliable, and deeply integrated into their workflow. Your team makes that possible.

You’ll lead a team responsible not just for shipping individual features, but for shaping how these systems come together into a coherent app experience. This role is ideal for someone who cares deeply about product quality, technical architecture, developer experience, and leading teams through ambitious, fast-moving roadmaps.

What you’ll do

  • Own the execution and quality of the Cursor desktop client across UI, features, and architecture

  • Partner closely with product, design, and platform teams to deliver cross-cutting user experiences spanning agents and core app workflows.

  • Set a high bar for engineering excellence, performance, reliability, and maintainability in a product used daily by millions of developers.

  • Supporting a team shipping features like async subagents, agent multitasking, a better plan mode, improved browser or computer use, and a strong local<>cloud story.

  • Hire and growing the team: sourcing, interviewing, and closing top fullstack talent.

You may be a fit if

  • You have led engineering teams building high-performance web or desktop apps.

  • Strong product instincts and a track record of shipping polished, user-facing software.

  • Experience balancing execution speed with long-term technical quality

  • Strong partnership skills across engineering, product, design, and infrastructure/platform teams.

  • You care deeply about performance, reliability, and developer experience, and have an eye for elegant systems design.

  • You have strong software engineering fundamentals and enjoy getting into the details—you can review a PR, debug a memory leak, or evaluate an architectural proposal with equal confidence.

  • You thrive in environments that are fast-moving, collaborative, and product-focused.

  • You make good calls in the gray area: weighing stability, performance, velocity, and user experience when there isn't a single "right" answer.

  • You're excited to push the limits of what's possible in AI-driven developer tools.

Applying

If there appears to be a fit, we'll reach out to schedule 2-3 interviews. After, we'll schedule an onsite in our office, where you'll work on a small project, discuss ideas, and meet the team.

Apply for this role

U.S. EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY INFORMATION   (Completion is voluntary and will not subject you to adverse treatment)

Anysphere, Inc. provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, or disability.

We invite all applicants to voluntarily self-identify their race, ethnicity, and gender. Submission of the information on this form is strictly voluntary and refusal to provide it will not subject you to any adverse treatment. Information obtained will be retained in a confidential file and separate from personnel records. This information may only be used in accordance with the provision of applicable federal laws, executive orders, and regulations. If you want more information about any of the sections, please check with a company representative.

SELF-IDENTIFICATION OF VETERAN STATUS  (Completion is voluntary and will not subject you to adverse treatment)

If you believe that you belong to any of the following categories of protected veterans, please indicate by making the appropriate selection

  • Disabled veteran – A veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military and is entitled to disability compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to disability compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, or was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability

  • Recently separated veteran – A veteran separated during the three-year period beginning on the date of the veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S military, ground, naval, or air service

  • Active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran – A veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge was authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense

  • Armed forces service medal veteran - Armed forces service medal veteran – A veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military ground, naval, or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985 (61 Fed. Reg. 1209).