Staff Software Engineer, Discord
Ads Infrastructure
$223-245k
+ Equity
Voice, video and text communication platform
Open for applications
Voice, video and text communication platform
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$223-245k
+ Equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
Discord's mission is to help friends and communities come together to hang out and explore their interests.
Role
Who you are
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, particularly in backend development with systems like Python, Rust, and Elixir
- Experience with large-scale system design, including database design, querying, and data caching
- Familiarity with cloud environments and observability tools such as Datadog
- A technical leadership background with at least 2 years of experience leading teams in a technical capacity
- Proficiency with event streaming tools like Kafka or PubSub
- A data-driven mindset and excitement for designing robust systems through infrastructure and algorithm validation
- A high degree of empathy for users, both internal and external, with a keen sense to seek feedback and continuously improve
What the job involves
- The Ads Delivery team at Discord is entrusted with the exciting challenge of determining the most effective ads to display to users, blending distributed systems with mathematical optimization and real-time infrastructure
- As Discord pushes forward with developing its ads platform, the team is pivotal in driving this initiative towards becoming a significant revenue stream
- With a focus on scalability, the team is building systems that scale towards the platform’s future, as well as creating an auction-based ads marketplace to maximize ad placement efficiency through market dynamics
- You'll be joining the cutting edge of Discord’s business strategy, working on high-impact ads infrastructure that aims to build Discord’s next big revenue stream
- Your work will directly influence how ads are delivered across Discord, affecting millions of users and supporting advertisers and game publishers
- You'll tackle complex optimization problems within distributed systems, contributing to the evolution of our ads server that blends real-time systems with advanced math optimization problems
- You'll play a key role in building an auction-based ads marketplace, allowing market dynamics to dictate the best ad outcomes
- Designing, building, and maintaining scalable systems for delivering the best ad experience while balancing obligations to advertisers
- Solving complex challenges related to high-volume data collection, ads ranking, budget pacing, and frequency capping
- Collaborating with teams such as Data Platform, Serving Infrastructure, and Persistence Infrastructure to understand and meet requirements
- Owning projects from end-to-end, refining requirements with Product teams, creating technical designs, implementing changes, and overseeing launches
- Partnering with a small set of teams to define problems and build solutions into high-scale, reliable, and observable infrastructure
- Utilizing insights from large datasets to validate data and algorithms, crafting well-designed, available, and observable systems
Our take
Discord is an industry giant in the chat app space. The free platform has rapidly become one of the most popular services in the sector since being founded in 2015. It counts over 150 million active users in 19 million communities, successfully expanding beyond its original focus on video game players to become a broader social networking app and public forum.
Discord's userbase has grown rapidly as remote work has become the norm and a new generation of internet users has come online, attracted to its youthful presentation and plethora of gaming and social tools. It has since fended off takeover bids from Microsoft and interest from other giants such as Amazon and Twitter, and has grown into a profitable company, funded by optional subscription fees and commissions from sales through the platform.
Discord’s remarkable growth, however, is not without obstacles. The company faces competition from deep-pocketed giants like Facebook, and regulatory concerns from those worried about the platform’s relatively light chat moderation. However, the company has the resources and expertise to adapt. For example, the acquisition of harassment detection software company Sentropy will go a long way towards placating the concerns of critics, as will the 2024 acquisition of teen app Gas used to give anonymous compliments to friends. All of these purchases are part of Discord's move to expand out of its mostly gaming-focused customer base.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
28% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)
Sep 2021
$500m
SERIES H
Dec 2020
$100m
SERIES H
Total funding: $979.3m
Company benefits
- Comprehensive medical insurance including Health, Dental and Vision
- Mental health resources and quarterly wellness stipends
- 16+ paid holidays, 4 weeks of PTO + use-what-you-need sick days
- Paid parental leave (plus fertility, adoption and other family planning benefits)
- Flexible long-term work options (remote and hybrid)
- Volunteer time off
- A diverse slate of Employee Resource Groups
- Plus commuter contributions and other perks for office-based employees
Company HQ
Potrero Hill, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Jason Citron
(CEO)Started out as a programmer at Papaya Studio, Stormfront Studios and Doublefine Productions. Also founded OpenFeint, a global mobile social gaming company.
Worked as a Software Engineer at Casamba and then Kabam. Was Lead Software Engineer at GREE International, and founded social network Guildwork.com in 2009.
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