Staff Software Engineer, Data Platform

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.

We're looking for someone who gets excited about building data infrastructure at massive scale and cares deeply about the gaming communities we serve. Someone with passion for building lovable products for Discord users and Discord engineers. We're building the next generation Data Platform that powers decisions for one of the most vibrant platforms in the world.

If you're the kind of Staff Engineer who sees ambiguity as an invitation — who builds systems that make whole teams faster, shapes technical strategy across the org, and wants your decisions to directly impact millions of gamers worldwide — we want to talk to you.

To learn more about Discord's Data Platform, read our engineering blog, including how we built our modern data stack leveraging open-source tools!

This position is based in our San Francisco office. For this role, the Hiring Manager would like folks to be in the office 1-2 days a week

What You'll Be Doing

• Own the technical direction of major Data Platform initiatives like GRC, scaling, or stream processing, from problem to production system and post-launch health

• Be a force multiplier: build reusable primitives, unblock teammates, and raise the quality bar across the team

• Stay a top code contributor. You write real production code while helping others reach the same bar

• Partner with XFN stakeholders to translate business problems into clear technical strategy

• Champion debate, decide, and commit and 80/20 thinking to drive robust technical solutions supporting multiple team

What you should have

• 7+ years of software engineering experience with a track record of driving large, ambiguous technical initiatives end-to-end

• Expertise in distributed systems and data infrastructure at scale. You've anticipated hard problems before they became incidents

• Demonstrated ability to multiply a team's impact through architectural thought leadership, design reviews, reusable abstractions, and well-timed mentorship

• Strong technical judgment: when to go fast vs. slow, when to build vs. integrate, and how to bring stakeholders along

• Cross-functional influence: you've driv