Staff Software Engineer, Data Platform

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: play video games. 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. 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. If you're the kind of Staff Engineer who sees ambiguity as an invitation — who builds systems that make whole teams faster, shapes technical strategy across the org, and wants your decisions to directly impact millions of gamers worldwide — we want to talk to you. To learn more about Discord's Data Platform, read our engineering blog, including how we built our modern data stack leveraging open-source tools! This position is based in our San Francisco office.   What You'll Be Doing * Own the technical direction of major Data Platform initiatives like GRC, scaling, or stream processing, from problem to production system and post-launch health * Be a force multiplier: build reusable primitives, unblock teammates, and raise the quality bar across the team * Stay a top code contributor. You write real production code while helping others reach the same bar * Partner with XFN stakeholders to translate business problems into clear technical strategy * Champion debate, decide, and commit and 80/20 thinking to drive robust technical solutions supporting multiple team What you should have * 7+ years of software engineering experience with a track record of driving large, ambiguous technical initiatives end-to-end * Expertise in distributed systems and data infrastructure at scale. You've anticipated hard problems before they became incidents * Demonstrated ability to multiply a team's impact through architectural thought leadership, design reviews, reusable abstractions, and well-timed mentorship * Strong technical judgment: when to go fast vs. slow, when to build vs. integrate, and how to bring stakeholders along * Cross-functional influence: you've driven alignment across engineering, product, and business without relying on authority Bonus Points * Passion for Discord and gaming * Experience with data governance, privacy compliance, real-time analytics infrastructure, or cost optimization in large-scale data environments 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 $248,000 to $310,000 + 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, and helps developers build and grow their businesses. 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.

WHO WE ARE ABOUT STRIPE Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies—from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups—use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone’s reach while doing the most important work of your career. ABOUT THE TEAM We are experts in data, working to make it cost-effective, understandable, and trustworthy. We build pipelines processing billions of events a day and are stewards of canonical data warehouses and datasets delivering products for Stripe Users while embedding with teams to build their data products. We are experts in using the Stripe Data Platform and to scale we lead the data culture and data education to enable product teams to own their data. We invest in AI-driven Data Ops to scale incident handling and serve as an escalation path for data incidents to minimize their impact. The Data Engineering Solutions team will work closely with product teams delivering trustworthy data / backend code / and innovative AI tools/platforms/services for data. WHAT YOU’LL DO We're looking for a person who could drive the Data Engineering Solutions team in solving high-impact, cutting-edge data problems. The ideal candidate will be someone that has built data pipelines for large scale volume, is deeply knowledgeable of key tools including Airflow/Spark/Kafka/Flink, is empathetic, excels at building strong relationships, and collaborates effectively with other Stripe teams to understand their use cases and unlock new capabilities. RESPONSIBILITIES * Lead the technical outcomes for a team of ambitious, talented engineers, providing mentorship, guidance, and support to ensure their success * Partner with our recruiting team to attract and hire top talent * Deliver cutting-edge data pipelines that scale to users' needs, focusing on reliability and efficiency * Develop strong subject matter expertise and manage the SLAs of data pipelines and full stack web applications that support critical stakeholders * Collaborate with product managers and peers across the company to create/improve canonical datasets and data warehouses, use golden paths, and ensure Stripes and customers are using trustworthy data * Leverage AI/LLM and Agents at scale to produce and analyze high-quality data on ambiguous problems * Have the opportunity to drive the execution of key data initiatives for Stripe, overseeing the entire development lifecycle from planning to delivery while maintaining high standards of quality and timely completion * Foster a collaborative and inclusive work environment, promoting innovation, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement within the team WHO YOU ARE We’re looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement. MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS * This is a Staff-level role — that typically means 10+ years of experience building and operating data systems, pipelines, warehouses, infrastructure, and leading teams to deliver exceptional solutions * A strong engineering background and passion for data as well as prior experience with writing and debugging data pipelines using a distributed data framework * An inquisitive nature in diving into data inconsistencies to pinpoint issues, and resolve deep rooted data quality issues * Knowledge of a backend development language (such as Scala, Java, or Go) and strong SQL experience * Extreme customer focus, with a commitment to partnering with product, leaders across the business, and other Stripe engineers to understand their use cases * Effective cross-functional collaboration, with the ability to think rigorously, communicate clearly, and make or coordinate difficult decisions and trade-offs * Thrive with high autonomy and responsibility in an ambiguous environment * Ability to foster and work in a healthy, inclusive, challenging, and supportive work environment PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS * Our stack is made up of Iceberg, Kafka, Change Data Capture, Flink, Spark, Airflow, Hive Metastore, Pinot, Trino, AWS Cloud - experience with all or some of these tools is a huge plus * Influencing open-source contributions is a huge plus * Experience creating and maintaining data marts / warehouses to power business reporting needs * Experience collaborating with Product, Go-To-Market, or Sales / Marketing teams * Genuine enjoyment of innovation and a deep interest in understanding how things work, with the ability to question and direct architectural decisions * Strong written and verbal communication skills for various audiences, including leadership, users, and company-wide