Senior Software Engineer | Discord | Remote (United States)
Posted 2025-09-08
Remote, USA
Full Time
Immediate Start
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">This position is US based only.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Discord is about giving people the power to create space to find belonging in their lives. We want to make it easier for you to talk regularly with the people you care about. We want you to build genuine relationships with your friends and communities close to home or around the world. Original, reliable, playful, and relatable. These are the values that connect our users and our employees at Discord.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">We’re on the lookout for an Senior Software Engineer for our Media Infrastructure team! If the thought of managing the storage, processing, and delivery of over 100PB of user-generated media across millions of Discord users thrills you – let’s talk! We’re all about ensuring these media are managed efficiently, securely, cost-effectively.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Our team has recently made significant strides in enhancing Discord’s media capabilities:</p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Instrumented Discord Client for media performance metrics.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Numerous improvements to the video playback experience on Discord mobile.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Preserving image color profile data when performing image transformations.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Link signing to reduce misuse of Discord attachment hosting.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">And much more! See our recent patch notes from <a href="https://discord.com/blog/discord-patch-notes-april-2024#heading-7" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">April</a> and <a href="https://discord.com/blog/discord-patch-notes-may-2024#heading-2" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">May</a>.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">As a Media Infrastructure engineer at Discord, you’ll be at the forefront of media innovation. You’ll oversee the entire lifecycle of media on our platform and create the core components that enable our product teams to introduce new media features.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">What you’ll be doing:</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Solve incredibly hard scaling challenges.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Ensure our systems are fast, reliable, and efficient.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Collaborate with product teams to add new features.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Write code and manage our media infrastructure.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Be empowered to improve media ingest & delivery at every point in the stack.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Be data-driven, ensuring processes can be monitored and measuring impact with data.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Work with a talented team of engineers who have built one of the largest media serving infrastructures in the world.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">What you should have:</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">5+ years of experience in writing and designing backend systems.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience solving complex problems within distributed systems</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience operating systems handling over 1M+ queries per second.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Familiarity with open-source software and the ability to dive into source code to find answers.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">A knack for making practical trade-offs when leading projects to ensure constant progress.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Strong literacy in video & image codecs and compatibility.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Proven ability to debug, fix, and optimize encoding issues.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Effective working across the full stack, from client to origin.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">Bonus Points:</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience with Rust or Python.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience with iOS or Android media transcoding and playback.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">In-depth experience building integrated video products using open-source libraries like FFmpeg, Libav, React Native Video, or Exoplayer.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Familiarity with cloud environments (GCP, AWS, etc.).</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Knowledge of DevOps tools like Salt or Terraform.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Contributions to open-source projects.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Interest or passion for the Discord platform. Extra thumbs up if you’ve created bots or apps on our platform!</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><em>#LI-Remote</em></p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><em>The US base salary range for this full-time position is $183,000 to $201,500 + 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.</em></p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Please see our Applicant and Candidate Privacy Policy for details regarding Discord’s collection and use of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking <a href="https://discord.com/terms/applicant-candidate-privacy-policy" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">here. </a></p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Discord is an equal opportunity employer that believes diversity inspires creativity and innovation. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where employees can do their best work free of harassment or discrimination, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, military status, or any other protected characteristics or identities. We encourage all candidates to apply for roles where they may make the most impact.</p>
<h4>About Us</h4>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Discord is a voice, video and text app that helps friends come together to hang out, have fun, and play games. With over 150 million monthly users, Discord has grown to become one of the most popular communications services in the world. Discord offers a premium subscription called Nitro that gives users special perks like higher quality streams and fun customizations.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">We’re working toward an inclusive world where no one feels like an outsider, where genuine human connection is a click, text chat, or voice call away. A place where everyone can find belonging. Challenging? Heck yes. Rewarding? Double heck yes. It’s a mission that gives us the chance to positively impact millions of people all over the world. <strong class=" font-semibold">So if this strikes a chord with you, come build belonging with us!</strong></p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Discord is about giving people the power to create space to find belonging in their lives. We want to make it easier for you to talk regularly with the people you care about. We want you to build genuine relationships with your friends and communities close to home or around the world. Original, reliable, playful, and relatable. These are the values that connect our users and our employees at Discord.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">We’re on the lookout for an Senior Software Engineer for our Media Infrastructure team! If the thought of managing the storage, processing, and delivery of over 100PB of user-generated media across millions of Discord users thrills you – let’s talk! We’re all about ensuring these media are managed efficiently, securely, cost-effectively.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Our team has recently made significant strides in enhancing Discord’s media capabilities:</p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Instrumented Discord Client for media performance metrics.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Numerous improvements to the video playback experience on Discord mobile.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Preserving image color profile data when performing image transformations.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Link signing to reduce misuse of Discord attachment hosting.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">And much more! See our recent patch notes from <a href="https://discord.com/blog/discord-patch-notes-april-2024#heading-7" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">April</a> and <a href="https://discord.com/blog/discord-patch-notes-may-2024#heading-2" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">May</a>.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">As a Media Infrastructure engineer at Discord, you’ll be at the forefront of media innovation. You’ll oversee the entire lifecycle of media on our platform and create the core components that enable our product teams to introduce new media features.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">What you’ll be doing:</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Solve incredibly hard scaling challenges.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Ensure our systems are fast, reliable, and efficient.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Collaborate with product teams to add new features.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Write code and manage our media infrastructure.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Be empowered to improve media ingest & delivery at every point in the stack.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Be data-driven, ensuring processes can be monitored and measuring impact with data.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Work with a talented team of engineers who have built one of the largest media serving infrastructures in the world.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">What you should have:</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">5+ years of experience in writing and designing backend systems.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience solving complex problems within distributed systems</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience operating systems handling over 1M+ queries per second.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Familiarity with open-source software and the ability to dive into source code to find answers.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">A knack for making practical trade-offs when leading projects to ensure constant progress.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Strong literacy in video & image codecs and compatibility.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Proven ability to debug, fix, and optimize encoding issues.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Effective working across the full stack, from client to origin.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">Bonus Points:</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience with Rust or Python.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience with iOS or Android media transcoding and playback.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">In-depth experience building integrated video products using open-source libraries like FFmpeg, Libav, React Native Video, or Exoplayer.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Familiarity with cloud environments (GCP, AWS, etc.).</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Knowledge of DevOps tools like Salt or Terraform.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Contributions to open-source projects.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Interest or passion for the Discord platform. Extra thumbs up if you’ve created bots or apps on our platform!</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><em>#LI-Remote</em></p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><em>The US base salary range for this full-time position is $183,000 to $201,500 + 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.</em></p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Please see our Applicant and Candidate Privacy Policy for details regarding Discord’s collection and use of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking <a href="https://discord.com/terms/applicant-candidate-privacy-policy" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">here. </a></p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Discord is an equal opportunity employer that believes diversity inspires creativity and innovation. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where employees can do their best work free of harassment or discrimination, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, military status, or any other protected characteristics or identities. We encourage all candidates to apply for roles where they may make the most impact.</p>
<h4>About Us</h4>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Discord is a voice, video and text app that helps friends come together to hang out, have fun, and play games. With over 150 million monthly users, Discord has grown to become one of the most popular communications services in the world. Discord offers a premium subscription called Nitro that gives users special perks like higher quality streams and fun customizations.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">We’re working toward an inclusive world where no one feels like an outsider, where genuine human connection is a click, text chat, or voice call away. A place where everyone can find belonging. Challenging? Heck yes. Rewarding? Double heck yes. It’s a mission that gives us the chance to positively impact millions of people all over the world. <strong class=" font-semibold">So if this strikes a chord with you, come build belonging with us!</strong></p>