Senior Software Engineer, Safety Backend

Discord has a highly engaged community of millions of daily active users who use the platform for many different reasons, but there’s one thing that nearly everyone does: play video games. Discord plays a uniquely important role in the future of gaming, and we are focused on making it easier and more fun for people to hang out before, during, and after playing games.

Keeping our platform safe requires infrastructure that is accurate, scalable, and fair and the engineering challenges that come with that are genuinely hard. Our Safety Engineering teams build and operate the systems that power content moderation, enforcement, and safety signal processing at scale.

Our team developed Osprey, the open-source investigation and incident response tool that allows safety teams to understand what is happening on their platforms and take actions at scale. Osprey has since been open-sourced and donated to ROOST, reflecting our commitment to industry-wide safety improvements.

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer who thrives on complex, ambiguous problems and can take full ownership of critical infrastructure from design through post-launch iteration.

What You'll Be Doing

• Own complex safety infrastructure projects end-to-end, from initial design through post-launch monitoring and iteration
• Build and maintain production systems that operate at massive scale, participating in on-call rotations
• Apply an adversarial mindset to your work — thinking through security, abuse scenarios, edge cases, and scalability concerns
• Collaborate closely with Trust & Safety, ML, Policy, and product teams to understand requirements and deliver effective solutions
• Break down large, multi-milestone projects into prioritized work streams while managing stakeholders and dependencies across teams
• Contribute to technical design discussions and write RFCs; help establish best practices and maintain a high quality bar through code reviews and mentorship

What You Should Have

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience focused on backend services and/or infrastructure
• Strong programming skills in Python; we work occasionally in Rust and TypeScript as well
• Experience building and operating distributed systems and production services at scale such as GCP or AWS
• Strong debugging skills and ability to navigate complex, multi-service codebases
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, including experience working with cross-functional partners
• A quality-centered mindset with attention to the right details at every stage of development

Bonus Points

• Experience with content moderation, trust & safety, or related problem domains
• Experience with ML/LLM integration
• Experience with observability tooling, metrics, and monitoring systems at scale
• A strong passion for Discord and making online communities safer

This position is US-based only. We are seeking candidates located in the Los Angeles or San Francisco Bay Areas. Candidates in the Los Angeles area can work remotely. Candidates in the San Francisco area are required to be in the office 2 days per week. Relocation assistance may be available to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Candidates must be located within one of the following counties:

• Los Angeles area: (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, or Ventura Counties)
• San Francisco Bay Area: (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties)

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $196,000 to $220,500 + equity + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role and level. Within the range, individual pay is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include equity, or benefits.

Why Discord?

Discord plays a uniquely important role in the future of gaming. We're a multiplatform, multigenerational and multiplayer platform that helps people deepen their friendships around games and shared interests, and helps developers build and grow their businesses. We believe games give us a way to have fun with our favorite people, whether listening to music together or grinding in competitive matches for diamond rank. Join us in our mission! Your future is just a click away!

Discord is committed to inclusion and providing reasonable accommodations during the interview process. We want you to feel set up for success, so if you are in need of reasonable accommodations, please let your recruiter know.

Please see our Applicant and Candidate Privacy Policy for details regarding Discord’s collection and usage of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking HERE.

Own high-impact projects within complex distributed systems. Improve production services processing millions of enforcement decisions daily, including 24/7 on-call rotation. Apply an adversarial mindset to anticipate abuse patterns and failure modes. Partner with Trust & Safety, Policy, ML, Data Science, and Legal teams. Contribute to measurement foundations for enforcement metrics. Possess 4+ years of professional software engineering experience with a focus on backend services and infrastructure. Strong programming skills in Python. Experience building and operating distributed systems and production services at scale using technologies like GCP, PostgreSQL, Redis, Pub/Sub, KKV, and gRPC. Demonstrated ability to own projects end-to-end and deliver results on time. Strong debugging skills and ability to navigate complex, multi-service codebases. Demonstrated adversarial thinking to anticipate misuse and system vulnerabilities. Experience being in 24/7 on-call rotations. Excellent collaboration and communication skills, including cross-functional stakeholder engagement. Experience using Gen AI products as part of daily workflow.