Manager, IT Ops Engineering

Discord; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Benefits

Job summary

Discord is building a modern IT Ops Engineering function. You will lead a team responsible for identity, devices, connectivity, SaaS, and endpoint security, with a focus on automation and self-service.

You will partner with Enterprise Security, EPE, People, Finance, and Procurement to drive lifecycle, spend, and governance. The role requires on-site presence three days a week in a hybrid setup and offers a US base salary with equity and benefits.

Qualifications

• Experience leading IT professionals and growing teams.
• Deep hands-on systems background across identity (Okta, SSO, SCIM, MFA).
• Experience with endpoint management (Jamf, Intune) and networking basics.
• Strong automation instincts and bias for automation over runbooks.
• Ability to measure impact by leverage and risk reduction, not tickets.

Responsibilities

• Hire, develop, and retain a team of IT Ops Engineers across employee tech surfaces.
• Set architecture, standards, and automation for identity, devices, connectivity, SaaS, and security.
• Own onboarding/offboarding reliability and on-call coverage.
• Drive vendor-native automation and no-code/low-code workflows to reduce toil.
• Partner with Enterprise Security and other orgs on lifecycle, spend, and governance.
• Own vendor relationships, license standards, and spend optimization.
• Support SOX and access certification processes in partnership with Enterprise Security.

Skills

People leadership

Identity management

Endpoint management

Networking

SaaS governance

Endpoint security

Automation mindset

Tools

Okta

Jamf

Intune

Job description

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.

Discord is building a modern IT Ops Engineering function, and this is the leader who will run it. IT Ops Engineering owns the systems every Discordian touches: identity, devices, connectivity, collaboration, SaaS, and the endpoint security surface we share with Enterprise Security (EntSec). You will be measured by your team's leverage and the reliability of the employee technology surface, not by ticket volume or headcount.

Discord's mission is to cultivate belonging, and doing that at scale requires internal systems that just work: for everyone, everywhere, from day one. Your team replaces manual, repetitive work with vendor-native automation, clean integrations, and self-service, so Discordians resolve common needs themselves instead of filing tickets. You will set the technical direction for the function, grow the engineers on it, and partner closely with Enterprise Platform Engineering (EPE) and EntSec on the hard problems.

What You’ll Do

• Build and lead the team: Hire, develop, and retain a team of IT Ops Engineers across the full employee technology surface. Set clear expectations, coach for growth, give direct feedback, and level people accurately against Discord's matrices.
• Set technical direction: Own the standards, architecture choices, and automation practices for how the team runs identity, devices, connectivity, SaaS, and endpoint security. Stay close to the craft, jumping into on-call rotation and escalations, automation, and spending roughly 10 to 20 percent of your time hands‑on.
• Own operational excellence: Own the reliability, coverage, and escalation model for the employee technology surface. Run onboarding and offboarding as a dependable service, and keep coverage and on‑call rotations healthy.
• Drive automation and outcomes: Push the team to eliminate toil through vendor-native automation and no‑code and low‑code workflows. Hold the team to outcomes and quantified impact, time saved and risk reduced, rather than tickets closed.
• Partner across the org: Operate as one team with Enterprise Security on the shared endpoint and identity surface. Partner with EPE where the team's work meets the platform, and with People, Finance, and Procurement on lifecycle, spend, and vendor decisions.
• Own vendor and spend: Own the relationships, configuration standards, and license and spend optimization for the team's core SaaS and endpoint tooling.
• Support compliance: Make sure the team supports access certification and User Access Review cycles and audit needs (e.g. SOX) in partnership with Enterprise Security.

What You Should Have

• Experience leading IT professionals, with a track record of growing people and delivering through a team. You know how to hire, coach, and set a bar.
• Deep, hands‑on systems background across several of: identity (Okta, SSO, SCIM, MFA), endpoint management (Jamf, Intune), networking (WiFi, DNS, DHCP, VPN, Zero Trust), SaaS administration and governance, audiovisual and conferencing, and endpoint security (EDR, DLP). You came up through the craft and can still hold technical direction.
• Strong automation instincts. You reach for automation before a runbook, and you expect your team to treat manual, repetitive work as a bug to be fixed.
• A business‑problem, outcomes mindset. You measure your team by leverage and impact, not by ticket volume, and you can articulate the time or risk your team removes.
• A collaborative, low-ego, secure‑by‑design posture, and clear written communication.
• Comfort with ambiguity and energy for building a new function in a greenfield environment.

For this role, the Hiring Manager needs this person to be in the office 3 days a week.

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $160,000 to $200,000 + 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.