Staff Software Engineer, Discord

• 8+ years of relevant industry experience, with demonstrated ability to deliver high-quality, high-impact work on complex projects
• Strong expertise in Python and back-end API frameworks (Flask, Django)
• Strong front-end development skills with JavaScript (React, TypeScript) for web and mobile platforms
• Significant experience in the Safety or Anti-Abuse domain with deep understanding of trust and safety challenges at scale
• Proven track record of owning large projects end-to-end with varying degrees of ambiguity, breaking down work into well-prioritized milestones with clear dependencies
• Demonstrated ability to make independent technical decisions that balance short-term needs with long-term sustainability and scalability
• Experience driving engineering excellence: setting quality standards, conducting thorough code reviews, and applying an adversarial mindset to identify security, performance, and scaling issues
• Strong communication skills with ability to provide high-quality technical feedback, drive alignment across stakeholders, and facilitate productive debates that lead to clear decisions
• Experience using metrics and dashboards (e.g., Datadog, Mode, Faros) to make data-driven decisions and monitor system health
• Ability to be a force multiplier for your team by mentoring others, establishing best practices, and helping teammates grow their skills

Desirable

• As a Staff Engineer on the Safety Experience team, you'll be a technical leader who autonomously delivers real business impact on large, ambiguous projects
• You'll design and build product features and systems that prevent harmful activities at scale while ensuring regulatory compliance
• This role requires both deep technical expertise and the ability to be a force multiplier for your team: driving engineering excellence, making solid technical decisions, and remaining a top code contributor
• You'll work cross-functionally to shape the technical direction of safety initiatives that protect hundreds of millions of Discord users
• This role reports to the Engineering Manager of Safety Experience
• Lead development of high-impact, user-facing safety products that deliver measurable results for Discord's users
• Own complex, multi-milestone projects end-to-end, identifying optimal solutions, navigating ambiguity and making independent technical decisions
• Design, build, and deploy robust production APIs, backend services, and data pipelines that enable safety features to scale efficiently
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Design, Policy, Data Science, ML, Legal, and Trust & Safety Operations to create solutions that are both impactful and lovable
• Drive engineering excellence by mentoring others and guiding the team through architectural challenges to ensure long-term scalability
• Respond rapidly to the ever-evolving abuse and compliance landscape with strategic thinking and swift execution