Engineering Manager, Desktop

Cursor; California (MO); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Cursor is seeking a leader to drive the Desktop team, owning the product and engineering experience that millions of developers rely on daily. You will oversee the Cursor desktop application UI, core features, and client-side architecture, collaborating with product, design, infrastructure, and platforms to deliver a fast, stable user experience.

This role emphasizes shaping technical architecture, improving developer experience, and steering ambitious, fast-moving roadmaps across

Qualifications

• 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.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Job description

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.