Senior Software Engineer, Discord
Safety Experience
$196-220.5k
+ Equity
More information about location
Voice, video and text communication platform
Be an early applicant
Voice, video and text communication platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$196-220.5k
+ Equity
More information about location
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
- 5+ years experience writing Python and utilizing back-end API frameworks (Flask, Django)
- 5+ years experience developing front-end interfaces with JavaScript (React, TypeScript) for both web and mobile platforms
- Familiarity with databases such as Cassandra, Postgres, and ScyllaDB
- Demonstrated success leading end‑to‑end delivery of complex projects: breaking down ambiguity, coordinating rollouts, and aligning stakeholders
- Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot, debug, and test complex systems in a live, production environment
- Exceptional communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work well with cross-functional partners, designers, and other engineers
- Experience using metrics and dashboards to make data-driven decisions and develop insightful reports
Desirable
- Experience in the Safety or Anti‑Abuse domain
- Experience analyzing and visualizing data using Datadog or Mode
- Familiarity with real‑time streaming systems like Kafka or Pub-Sub
- Ability to contribute to offline analytics jobs and processes
- Experience building and operating mobile‑client features on iOS and Android
- Exposure to lower‑level languages such as Go, Rust, and Elixir
- A strong moral compass that drives you to protect users and do the right thing
What the job involves
- As a Senior Engineer on the Safety Experience team, you'll lead the charge in making Discord's platform safer for hundreds of millions of users
- You'll design, build, and maintain product features and systems that prevent harmful activities while ensuring regulatory compliance
- Keeping users safe is essential for Discord's growth, making your team's work critical
- This role reports to the Engineering Manager of Safety Experience
- Lead development of highly‑visible, user‑facing products that protect Discord's users
- Design, build, and deploy robust production APIs, backend services, and data pipelines to launch safety features at scale
- Collaborate cross‑functionally with Product, Design, Policy, Data Science, ML, Legal, and T&S Operations to create solutions that are both impactful and lovable
- Iterate on in-house tooling to supercharge our T&S workflows
- Respond rapidly to the ever‑evolving abuse and compliance landscape
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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