Staff Software Engineer

Discord is looking for a Staff Software Engineer who is passionate about building and scaling the infrastructure that powers real-time communication for millions of users. The team builds and maintains our WebRTC-based systems and scales the distributed infrastructure that enables millions of concurrent voice and video conversations globally.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll work on technology that directly impacts how millions of people communicate daily. From casual voice chats to large-scale community events and high-stakes esports tournaments, your code will power conversations that matter. You'll tackle interesting technical challenges at scale – optimizing for performance and reliability, handling traffic patterns across the globe, and building systems resilient enough to handle Discord's massive growth. This is an opportunity to work with cutting-edge distributed systems technology while having a real, measurable impact on user experience.

What you’ll do:

• Build and optimize distributed systems that handle millions of concurrent users through, focusing on implementation of scalable solutions.
• Implement performance improvements across both control and media layers, improving latency, reliability, and user experience metrics.
• Contribute to next-generation infrastructure architecture that pushes the boundaries of real-time communication.
• Develop and maintain infrastructure automation, monitoring, and observability solutions to ensure reliable deployments and operations.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, such as the Audio/Video Clients team, to deliver features and product launches.
• Debug and resolve complex production issues across distributed systems, from infrastructure to application layer.

What you should have:

• 8+ years of experience working on large scale distributed systems, including monitoring and performance optimization.
• Strong programming skills in languages like Rust, Python, C++, and/or Elixir.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems concepts including replication, partitioning, and consistency models.
• Strong debugging skills and ability to troubleshoot issues across the full stack.
• Experience with cloud providers (AWS, GCP) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Collaborative mindset with experience working in cross-functional engineering teams.

Bonus points:

• Experience with Elixir in production environments.
• Hands-on experience with WebRTC, HLS, or DASH streaming protocols.
• Knowledge of network protocols and understanding of networking fundamentals (TCP/UDP, packet loss, jitter, congestion control etc).
• Familiarity with real-time voice/video infrastructure or media server technologies (SFU/MCU architectures)
• Contributions to open source projects in the audio/video space.

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). For this role, the hiring manager would like folks to be in the office 1 day a week. Relocation assistance may be available. 

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $248,000 to $279,000 + 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.