Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning (Safety)

Discord; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 220,000 - 248,000; Full time

Job summary

Discord is seeking an experienced Senior Machine Learning Engineer to join our Safety ML team in San Francisco. You will help build and deploy models for content understanding, risk evaluation, and account integrity, collaborating with product, engineering, policy, legal, and Trust and Safety.

You’ll analyze data, iterate on models, deploy to production, and document approaches while applying best practices.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in ML engineering or applied ML roles.
• Strong coding skills in Python and fluency in ML frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow.
• Experience building performant machine learning systems at scale and have driven the execution of projects from ideation to production.
• Ability to think from first principles, approaching complex problems with creativity, clear reasoning, and pragmatic solutions.
• A growth mindset: seeking feedback, reflecting on decisions, and continuously improving.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with a history of partnering effectively across engineering, data science, legal, policy, and product teams.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related field (Physics, Math, Operations Research, etc.)

Responsibilities

• Analyze data to identify risk patterns and inform the design of machine learning models.
• Build, iterate on, and evaluate models that detect risk and anomalous behavior.
• Work with product, engineering, legal, and Trust and Safety partners to deliver effective ML solutions.
• Work with partner teams in Trust & Safety to curate golden label sets at scale and improve data labeling techniques for model training.
• Deploy models into production systems, writing backend code as needed to ensure scalability and reliability, and monitor performance.
• Document modeling approaches and systems, and apply current machine learning best practices.

Skills

Python programming

First principles thinking

Growth mindset

Communication & collaboration

ML engineering experience

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

TensorFlow

Production ML systems

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.

We are seeking an experienced Senior Machine Learning Engineer to join our Safety ML team. This role focuses on building and deploying machine learning models that help keep Discord users safe, including real-time and batch systems for content understanding, risk evaluation, and account integrity. You will work closely with partners across product, engineering, design, policy, legal, and Trust and Safety to design and deliver effective ML solutions. This role reports to the Senior Manager of Machine Learning, Safety.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Analyze data to identify risk patterns and inform the design of machine learning models
• Build, iterate on, and evaluate models that detect risk and anomalous behavior
• Work with product, engineering, legal, and Trust and Safety partners to deliver effective ML solutions
• Work with partner teams in Trust & Safety to curate golden label sets at scale and improve data labeling techniques for model training
• Deploy models into production systems, writing backend code as needed to ensure scalability and reliability, and monitor performance
• Document modeling approaches and systems, and apply current machine learning best practices

What you should have

• 4+ years of experience in ML engineering or applied ML roles.
• Strong coding skills in Python and fluency in ML frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow.
• Experience building performant machine learning systems at scale and have driven the execution of projects from ideation to production.
• Ability to think from first principles, approaching complex problems with creativity, clear reasoning, and pragmatic solutions.
• A growth mindset: seeking feedback, reflecting on decisions, and continuously improving.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with a history of partnering effectively across engineering, data science, legal, policy, and product teams.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related field (Physics, Math, Operations Research, etc.

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $220,000 to $247,500 + 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.

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.