Senior Software Engineer, Discord

Machine Learning, Safety

$202-220k

+ Equity

Python
Kafka
Scikit-Learn
PyTorch
Flink
Mid and Senior level
Remote in US
San Francisco Bay Area
Discord

Voice, video and text communication platform

Be an early applicant

Discord

Voice, video and text communication platform

1001+ employees

B2CGamingCommunicationSocialSocial MediaCommunity

Be an early applicant

$202-220k

+ Equity

Python
Kafka
Scikit-Learn
PyTorch
Flink
Mid and Senior level
Remote in US
San Francisco Bay Area

1001+ employees

B2CGamingCommunicationSocialSocial MediaCommunity

Company mission

Discord's mission is to help friends and communities come together to hang out and explore their interests.

Role

Who you are

  • You have 4+ years of experience as a Machine Learning Engineer or Data Scientist
  • You have deployed low-latency machine learning systems at scale, driving the process from ideation through to production implementation
  • You are proficient in Python and have a deep understanding of software engineering principles for data-intensive applications
  • You have managed the end-to-end data lifecycle for ML products, with expertise in handling complex feedback loops and ensuring offline/online data consistency
  • You have experience with a variety of machine learning tools and libraries, including PyTorch, Transformers, XGBoost, and scikit-learn
  • You stay ahead of industry trends, continuously exploring and implementing cutting-edge techniques to tackle evolving ML challenges
  • You are passionate about solving complex data problems, anticipating adversarial tactics, and collaborating with domain experts to craft innovative ML solutions

Desirable

  • You have mentored other engineers and led project execution as a tech lead
  • You have experience building ML systems with streaming data using technologies like Flink, Beam, PubSub, or Kafka
  • You have experience working with and developing machine learning models for large-scale social platform datasets

What the job involves

  • Our mission is to build a platform that enables communities to flourish and where all members can safely find belonging
  • Machine learning is essential in building and maintaining this safe environment
  • Our Safety Machine Learning team deploys state-of-the-art detection systems to mitigate harmful behavior, illegal content, spam, and other adversarial abuse
  • We take ownership of the solutions we build from concept to deployment, working closely with product, engineering, and data science teams to drive large-scale impact
  • Our ML and safety systems continuously evolve to ensure our products are safe by default
  • We’re seeking a technical, mission-driven Senior Machine Learning Engineer to design and implement end-to-end ML solutions that make Discord safer
  • Build and deploy ML systems to detect and prevent abuse, spam, and other malicious activities
  • Develop reusable ML features by leveraging user behavior modeling, language processing, and social graph analysis
  • Design, implement, and evaluate experiments to assess the impact of updated ML models
  • Build scalable ML infrastructure, ensuring engineering excellence and long-term system reliability
  • Collaborate closely with product management, engineering, and data science teams to identify high-impact opportunities and execute them effectively

Our take

Discord is an industry giant in the chat app space. The free platform has rapidly become one of the most popular services in the sector since being founded in 2015. It counts over 150 million active users in 19 million communities, successfully expanding beyond its original focus on video game players to become a broader social networking app and public forum.

Discord's userbase has grown rapidly as remote work has become the norm and a new generation of internet users has come online, attracted to its youthful presentation and plethora of gaming and social tools. It has since fended off takeover bids from Microsoft and interest from other giants such as Amazon and Twitter, and has grown into a profitable company, funded by optional subscription fees and commissions from sales through the platform.

Discord’s remarkable growth, however, is not without obstacles. The company faces competition from deep-pocketed giants like Facebook, and regulatory concerns from those worried about the platform’s relatively light chat moderation. However, the company has the resources and expertise to adapt. For example, the acquisition of harassment detection software company Sentropy will go a long way towards placating the concerns of critics, as will the 2024 acquisition of teen app Gas used to give anonymous compliments to friends. All of these purchases are part of Discord's move to expand out of its mostly gaming-focused customer base.

Steph headshot

Steph

Company Specialist

Insights

Top investors

Few candidates hear
back within 2 weeks

28% employee growth in 12 months

Company

Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)

Sep 2021

$500m

SERIES H

Dec 2020

$100m

SERIES H

Total funding: $979.3m

Company benefits

  • Comprehensive medical insurance including Health, Dental and Vision
  • Mental health resources and quarterly wellness stipends
  • 16+ paid holidays, 4 weeks of PTO + use-what-you-need sick days
  • Paid parental leave (plus fertility, adoption and other family planning benefits)
  • Flexible long-term work options (remote and hybrid)
  • Volunteer time off
  • A diverse slate of Employee Resource Groups
  • Plus commuter contributions and other perks for office-based employees

Company values

  • Autonomy
  • Mastery
  • Purpose
  • Compassion

Company HQ

Potrero Hill, San Francisco, CA

Leadership

Started out as a programmer at Papaya Studio, Stormfront Studios and Doublefine Productions. Also founded OpenFeint, a global mobile social gaming company.

Worked as a Software Engineer at Casamba and then Kabam. Was Lead Software Engineer at GREE International, and founded social network Guildwork.com in 2009.

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