Senior Software Engineer - Safety Processing
Discord is used by over 200 million people every month for many different reasons, but there’s one thing that nearly everyone does on our platform: play video games. Over 90% of our users play games, spending a combined 1.5 billion hours playing thousands of unique titles on Discord each month. Discord plays a uniquely important role in the future of gaming. We are focused on making it easier and more fun for people to talk and hang out before, during, and after playing games.
The Safety Processing team is responsible for the systems that power Discord's ability to detect, review, and enforce against harmful content at scale. We build the infrastructure and decision systems that enable accurate, efficient, and fair content moderation across all of Discord. We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer who can handle complex, multi-milestone projects and deliver high-quality systems that protect millions of users daily.
As a Senior Engineer on Safety Processing, you'll take full ownership of projects from initial design through post-launch monitoring and iteration. You'll work on challenging problems at the intersection of automation, large-scale distributed systems, and content safety. You'll help build automated decision systems that scale our review capacity by 10x, develop enforcement infrastructure that handles millions of decisions per day, or architect systems that centralize and simplify safety signal processing. You'll collaborate closely with Trust & Safety operations, ML teams, Policy, and product partners to deliver solutions that make Discord safer while maintaining our commitment to user experience. You'll deliver lovable products while maintaining Discord's high quality bar, utilizing 80/20 thinking and a user-centric approach. You'll embody a growth mindset, diving into new code and technologies to deliver safety solutions that protect millions of users daily. This person reports to the Engineering Manager of Safety Processing.
This role offers the opportunity to work on systems that directly impact user safety, tackle novel technical challenges in content moderation at scale, and help shape the future of how Discord keeps communities safe.
What You'll Be Doing:
- Own complex safety infrastructure projects end-to-end, from initial design through post-launch monitoring and iteration
- Build and maintain critical systems for automated content review, enforcement, and safety signal processing at massive scale
- Apply an adversarial mindset to your work, thinking through security, abuse scenarios, edge cases, and scalability concerns to protect Discord's users
- Collaborate with Trust & Safety, ML, Policy, and product teams to understand requirements and deliver effective safety solutions
- Break down complex, multi-milestone projects into smaller work streams while managing stakeholders and dependencies across teams
- Debug and resolve issues within the team's codebase and adjacent systems, participating in on-call rotations
- Contribute to technical design discussions and documentation, writing RFCs
- Help establish best practices and maintain the team's quality bar through code reviews and mentorship
What You Should Have:
- 4+ years of professional software engineering experience with a focus on backend services and infrastructure
- Strong programming skills in Python
- Experience building and operating distributed systems and production services at scale
- Demonstrated ability to own projects end-to-end and deliver results on time
- Strong debugging skills and ability to navigate complex codebases
- Excellent collaboration skills and ability to work effectively with cross-functional partners
- Experience working in larger engineering organizations with multiple teams and stakeholders
- A quality-centered mindset with attention to the right details at every stage of development
- Demonstrated adversarial thinking - ability to anticipate misuse, edge cases, and system vulnerabilities
- Experience with distributed systems concepts and cloud platforms (GCP/AWS)
- Experience being in 24/7 on-call rotations
- Strong collaboration and communication skills
Bonus Points:
- Experience with content moderation, trust & safety, or related problem domains
- Experience with workflow automation or decision systems
- Experience with ML/LLM integration and prompt engineering
- Experience with observability tools, metrics, and monitoring systems at scale
- Experience with cloud platforms (GCP/AWS)
- A strong passion for Discord and making online communities safer
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). Relocation assistance may be available.
The US base salary range for this full-time position is $196,000 to $220,500 + 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. 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.
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