Senior Software Engineer, Data Platform

<div class="content-intro"><p>Discord has a highly engaged community of millions of daily active users who use the platform for many different reasons, but there’s one thing that nearly everyone does: <strong>play video games.</strong> Discord plays a uniquely important role in the future of gaming, and we are focused on making it easier and more fun for people to hang out before, during, and after playing games.</p></div><p id=":r1u:" class="content-editable-leaf-rtl notranslate" data-content-editable-leaf="true">Every day, millions of gamers gather on Discord to hang out, strategize their next raid, celebrate tournament victories, and build communities around the games they love. Behind every voice channel, every streamer Go Live, every Quest completed, there's data, petabytes of it, telling the story of how people connect through gaming.</p> <p class="notion-selectable notion-text-block" data-block-id="30ef46fd-48aa-8065-9c37-cd446d319e5f">We're looking for someone who gets excited about building data infrastructure at massive scale and cares deeply about the gaming communities we serve. Someone with passion for building lovable products for Discord users and Discord engineers. We’re building the next generation Data Platform that powers decisions for one of the most vibrant platforms in the world.</p> <p id=":r20:" class="content-editable-leaf-rtl notranslate" data-content-editable-leaf="true">If you're the kind of Software Engineer who lights up when talking about distributed systems, cares deeply about user privacy, grounding decisions in data, and wants your work to directly impact millions of gamers worldwide, we want to talk to you.</p> <p>To learn more about Discord’s Data Platform,&nbsp;read our engineering blog, including <a class="notion-link-token notion-focusable-token notion-enable-hover" href="https://discord.com/blog/how-discord-uses-open-source-tools-for-scalable-data-orchestration-transformation" data-token-index="1"><span class="link-annotation-30ef46fd-48aa-80c9-a690-fdca8d5b456b--996582278">how we built our modern data stack leveraging open-source tools!</span></a></p> <p><strong>This position is based in our San Francisco office. For this role, the Hiring Manager would like folks to be in the office 1-2 days a week.</strong></p> <p><strong><span class="notion-enable-hover" data-token-index="0">What You'll Be Doing</span></strong></p> <ul> <li>Build and maintain data infrastructure processing petabytes of data across millions of users</li> <li>Write clean, well-tested code for data ingestion, transformation, and serving systems</li> <li>Own projects end-to-end. From design through deployment and production support</li> <li>Collaborate with data scientists, engineers, and product teams to deliver solutions that power Discord's insights</li> <li>Apply 80/20 thinking to challenge requirements, cut unnecessary complexity, and deliver the optimal solution at the right time</li> <li>Mentor teammates through code reviews, RFCs, and shared technical knowledge that makes the whole team better</li> </ul> <p><strong><span class="notion-enable-hover" data-token-index="0">What You Should Have</span></strong></p> <ul> <li>5+ years of software engineering experience with strong programming skills in Python, Java, Rust, Go, or similar</li> <li>Hands-on experience building or operating data infrastructure like pipelines, streaming systems, orchestration, or data warehousing at scale (BigQuery, Kafka, Spark, Flink, Airflow, Dagster, or similar)</li> <li>Proven track record of delivering complex, multi-phase projects autonomously. You've owned the hard ones and handled edge cases, failure modes, and scale before they became problems.</li> <li>Strong collaboration and communication skills, including with XFN partners. You write clear technical documents, drive alignment, and bring people along on technical decisions</li> <li>Growth mindset. You’ve failed, learned, and shipped something better because of it</li> </ul> <p><strong><span class="notion-enable-hover" data-token-index="0">Bonus Points</span></strong></p> <ul> <li>Passion for Discord and gaming</li> <li>Familiarity with data governance, privacy compliance, or cost optimization in large-scale data environments</li> </ul> <p><span class="notion-enable-hover" data-token-index="0">