Discord is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join our Infrastructure organization. In this role, you will operate across infrastructure teams to shape our technical vision and ensure Discord runs reliably at immense scale. You will contribute to our long-term roadmap and tackle our most complex technical challenges.
What You'll Do
- Lead Discord's most critical infrastructure initiatives.
- Define and drive the technical vision and multi-year roadmap for Infrastructure.
- Partner with leadership across the company to ensure infrastructure capabilities enable product innovation.
- Design systems that balance reliability, cost-efficiency, and scalability.
- Mentor and grow senior engineers across multiple teams.
- Represent Discord's engineering culture externally through blog posts, conference talks, and open source.
What We're Looking For
- 10+ years of experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems.
- Experience architecting complex infrastructure serving hundreds of millions of users with strict uptime requirements.
- Deep expertise in backend systems, databases, and the operational realities of running systems at scale.
- Ability to navigate significant ambiguity and make sound technical decisions that hold up over time.
- Experience influencing technical direction across many teams without direct authority.
- Strong communication skills and the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to any audience.
- A passion for mentorship and raising the capabilities of engineers around you.
Nice to Have
- Experience with Rust, Elixir, or Python in production systems.
- Expertise with distributed databases like ScyllaDB, Cassandra, or similar.
- Expertise building large scale chat products.
- History of open source contributions.
Technical Stack
- Languages: Rust, Elixir, Python
- Databases: ScyllaDB, Postgres, Elasticsearch
- Cloud: Google Cloud
Team & Environment
You will be a technical leader within Discord's Infrastructure organization, working across teams.
Benefits & Compensation
- Compensation range: $400,000 to $450,000 + equity
- Equity
- Benefits
Work Mode
This is a hybrid role for candidates located in the San Francisco Bay Area (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties).
Discord is committed to inclusion and providing reasonable accommodations during the interview process.
