Director of Engineering, Safety

Discord; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 400,000 - 450,000; Full time

Job summary

Discord is hiring a Director of Engineering focused on Safety Infrastructure in San Francisco. This role involves leading engineering teams, driving automation roadmaps with AI, and enhancing engineering quality. Candidates should have extensive experience managing teams and building infrastructure.

The position offers a competitive salary of $400,000 to $450,000 plus equity and benefits. Applicants must reside in or be willing to relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Qualifications

• 5+ years as a software engineer and 5+ years as an EM with experience managing teams.
• Strong understanding of architecture discussions on event-driven systems.
• Experience working with human-in-the-loop teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow engineering teams in safety infrastructure.
• Drive the automation roadmap with Safety ML.
• Consolidate systems and elevate engineering quality.

Skills

Backend and distributed systems

AI and ML systems

Excellent communication skills

Cross-functional collaboration

Vendor management

Job description

We’re hiring a Director of Engineering to lead Safety Infrastructure Engineering at Discord. The org is roughly 20 engineers across two teams with two EM direct reports. You’ll report to the senior Director of Safety and work closely with T&S Operations, Safety ML, Safety Product, Legal, Policy, Security, and Core Tech.

What you will do

• Lead and grow two engineering teams covering our safety backend: the decision platform, classification systems, content understanding, intake and routing pipelines, and observability.
• Drive the automation roadmap with Safety ML. Decide where AI belongs in the loop, where humans still win, and hold the line on quality, latency, and cost.
• Own the queue routing and internal tooling our ops teams and vendor partners rely on, and partner with T&S Operations on golden sets, QA, appeals, and evals that turn operational signal into better systems.
• Consolidate fragmented systems onto infra and set the bar for engineering quality: on‑call, incident response, technical review, and ownership.
• Hire, coach, and grow senior leaders.

Who you are

• 5+ years as a software engineer with a strong backend and distributed systems background, and 5+ years as an EM including 2+ years managing managers. Experience running 20+ engineers through multiple EMs.
• Strong infrastructure instincts. You can hold your own in architecture discussions on event‑driven systems, service migrations, and platform design.
• Fluent in AI and ML systems enough to partner credibly with an ML org and make good calls about where automation belongs in a decision pipeline.
• Experienced working closely with ops or human‑in‑the‑loop teams. You get the rhythm of QA, calibration, appeals, and ground‑truth work, and build tools that respect the people using them.
• Excellent communication and cross‑functional collaboration skills, with a history of partnering effectively across engineering, ML, data science, policy, legal, and product teams.
• Practical about throughput, vendor management, and unit economics.
• An empathetic and experienced recruiter and coach. People you’ve managed want to work with you again.

Bonus

• A strong passion for Discord and/or gaming, and an appreciation for the communities we serve.
• Trust & Safety, fraud, integrity, or abuse engineering at a consumer platform.
• Building ML platforms, MLOps, or automated decisioning at scale.
• Managing vendor‑based ops (BPO, content review, third‑party tools), or building internal tools where ops or review teams are the primary user.
• Payments, fraud, or commerce infra.

Candidates must reside in or be willing to relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties). Relocation assistance may be available.

The US base salary range for this full‑time position is $400,000 to $450,000 plus equity and 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.

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.