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Senior Software Engineer - API Platform

San Francisco Bay Area (U.S.)

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 API Platform team is responsible for the core functionality and reliability of Discord’s API layer, a large distributed service handling approximately 500 thousand requests per second and tens of thousands of asynchronous jobs per second. Through developing and operating the core components of the API, our work allows internal developers to rapidly and safely deliver new features to production - and allows users to send billions of messages a day.

As an API Platform engineer, you will continuously improve our codebase, processes, and infrastructure - affecting nearly every interaction users have on Discord!

What You'll Be Doing:

  • Ensure the reliable and efficient operation of critical systems that serve millions of users daily.
  • Write code but also manage our infrastructure.
  • Enable dozens of teams to deploy code to production quickly and safely.
  • Use and enhance observability tools to troubleshoot complex issues.
  • Become a vital part of a small team of talented engineers passionate about keeping Discord running smoothly.

What you have:

  • 5+ years of experience designing and developing backend systems.
  • Experience scaling distributed systems
  • Experience operating complex services in a production environment
  • Familiarity with open source software, and the ability to dig into a library’s source code to find the answer you’re looking for. 
  • Confidence making tradeoffs when leading projects to ensure constant progress.

Bonus Points:

  • Experience with Python or Rust.
  • Experience deploying and managing containerized applications with Kubernetes
  • Experience with Google Pub/Sub or other message queue systems
  • A deep understanding of Python runtime internals or the gevent library
  • You have built or contributed to open source projects.
  • You are a Discord power user and have built bots or apps interacting with our platform.


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.

Please see our Applicant and Candidate Privacy Policy for details regarding Discord’s collection and usage of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking HERE.

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