Lead, Scaled Abuse Research & Automation

EngineersOfAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Discord is looking for a Manager to lead the SCAR team in San Francisco, the platform's first line of defense against scaled abuse. You will set strategy, build a research program, and drive ML-powered automation to reduce manual work and close the loop with Safety ML.

You'll coach Scaled Abuse Scientists, define north-star metrics, and partner with Product, Data Science, Policy, Legal, Trust & Safety, and Revenue to bake safety into design decisions and harden the product against fraud and

Qualifications

• 2+ years of people management experience leading technical teams.
• 4+ years of experience working on Trust & Safety, fraud, anti-abuse, or a closely adjacent adversarial domain at a consumer-scale platform.
• Demonstrated ability to drive ML and automation adoption within a Trust & Safety or operations context.
• Strong analytical skills and fluency in SQL and Python for data investigation and pattern analysis.
• Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow the SCAR team, a group of Scaled Abuse Scientists who defend against bulk fake accounts, login abuse, spam, scams, and fraud.
• Set a vision for automation and scale SCAR's impact by partnering with Safety ML on ML-driven detection and AI-powered incident response workflows.
• Define scaled abuse north-star metrics and build a roadmap and prioritization framework.
• Stand up a research program where the team operates as scientists to surface attacker questions and answer them through structured research.
• Close the loop with Safety ML so signals feed into model features and automated countermeasures.
• Partner cross-functionally with Product, Safety ML, Data Science, Policy, Legal, Trust & Safety, and Revenue to influence safety-by-design decisions.
• Coach, hire, and grow Scaled Abuse Scientists.
• Communicate attacker dynamics, economic incentives, and trade-offs clearly to senior leadership.

Skills

People management

Trust & Safety

ML/Automation

SQL

Python

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication

Job description

Discord is looking for a Manager to lead the SCAR team in San Francisco, the platform's first line of defense against scaled abuse. You will set strategy, build a research program, and drive ML-powered automation to reduce manual work and close the loop with Safety ML.

You'll coach Scaled Abuse Scientists, define north-star metrics, and partner with Product, Data Science, Policy, Legal, Trust & Safety, and Revenue to bake safety into design decisions and harden the product against fraud and