Staff Software Engineer, Safety Experience

Discord; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 248,000 - 310,000; Full time

Job summary

Discord is seeking a senior backend engineer to lead the development of safety-focused, user-facing products at scale in San Francisco. You will own multi-milestone projects, design robust APIs, and build data pipelines that power trust and safety features for millions of players.

Collaborate across Product, Design, Policy, Data Science, ML, Legal, and Trust & Safety Ops; mentor teammates, enforce quality standards, and drive security and reliability through thoughtful architecture and proactive

Qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant industry experience.
• Proficiency in Python and Flask/Django.
• Frontend skills in React/TypeScript for web and mobile.
• Experience in Safety/Anti-Abuse domain at scale.
• Able to own large projects end-to-end with milestones.
• Independent technical decision-making balancing short- and long-term needs.
• Experience driving engineering excellence, reviews, and security-minded coding.
• Strong communication, stakeholder alignment, and collaboration.
• Data-driven decision making with metrics and dashboards.
• Mentoring others and establishing best practices.
• Experience using AI tools to boost dev workflows.

Responsibilities

• Lead development of high-impact, user-facing safety products with measurable impact.
• Own multi-milestone projects end-to-end, identifying optimal solutions.
• Design, build, and deploy robust production APIs, backend services, and data pipelines for safety features.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Design, Policy, Data Science, ML, Legal, and Trust & Safety Ops.
• Mentor others and guide architectural decisions for long-term scalability.
• Respond rapidly to evolving abuse and compliance landscapes with strategic execution.

Skills

Python

Flask

Django

React

TypeScript

JavaScript

Safety/Anti-Abuse domain

Project ownership

Mentoring

Metrics dashboards

AI tooling (Claude Code, Cursor)

Tools

Datadog

Mode

Faros

Claude Code

Cursor

Kafka

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.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Lead development of high-impact, user-facing safety products that deliver measurable results for Discord's users.
• Own complex, multi-milestone projects end-to-end, identifying optimal solutions, navigating ambiguity and making independent technical decisions.
• Design, build, and deploy robust production APIs, backend services, and data pipelines that enable safety features to scale efficiently.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Design, Policy, Data Science, ML, Legal, and Trust & Safety Operations to create solutions that are both impactful and lovable.
• Drive engineering excellence by mentoring others and guiding the team through architectural challenges to ensure long-term scalability.
• Respond rapidly to the ever-evolving abuse and compliance landscape with strategic thinking and swift execution.

What You Should Have

• 8+ years of relevant industry experience, with demonstrated ability to deliver high-quality, high-impact work on complex projects.
• Strong expertise in Python and back-end API frameworks (Flask, Django).
• Strong front-end development skills with JavaScript (React, TypeScript) for web and mobile platforms.
• Significant experience in the Safety or Anti-Abuse domain with deep understanding of trust and safety challenges at scale.
• Proven track record of owning large projects end-to-end with varying degrees of ambiguity, breaking down work into well-prioritized milestones with clear dependencies.
• Demonstrated ability to make independent technical decisions that balance short-term needs with long-term sustainability and scalability.
• Experience driving engineering excellence: setting quality standards, conducting thorough code reviews, and applying an adversarial mindset to identify security, performance, and scaling issues.
• Strong communication skills with ability to provide high-quality technical feedback, drive alignment across stakeholders, and facilitate productive debates that lead to clear decisions.
• Experience using metrics and dashboards (e.g., Datadog, Mode, Faros) to make data-driven decisions and monitor system health.
• Ability to be a force multiplier for your team by mentoring others, establishing best practices, and helping teammates grow their skills.
• Experience utilizing AI tools like Claude Code and Cursor to supercharge dev workflows.

Bonus Points

• Familiarity with databases such as Cassandra, Postgres, or ScyllaDB.
• Experience with real-time streaming systems like Kafka or Pub-Sub.
• Track record of building and operating native mobile features on iOS and Android.
• Experience designing and implementing monitoring strategies and on-call/on-point processes for production systems.
• Knowledge of lower-level languages such as Go, Rust, or Elixir.

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $248,000 to $310,000 + 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.

Please see our Applicant and Candidate Privacy Policy for details regarding Discord's collection and usage of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking HERE.