About this role.
Discord is hiring a Staff Software Engineer to lead development of its next-generation experimentation platform for internal product teams. The role combines full-stack platform engineering, high-scale data systems, telemetry, A/B testing infrastructure, statistical tooling, and user experience. This staff-level engineer will lead complex initiatives, mentor engineers, and partner with technical and non-technical stakeholders across the company. Core requirements include 7+ years of full-stack engineering experience, Python, SQL, experimentation frameworks, data governance, and strong cross-functional communication. Experience with AI-assisted workflows, human-in-the-loop AI, cloud platforms, and modern data processing is advantageous.
Role DNA
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4/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
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Core skills
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Sample interview questions
I would begin with clear experiment lifecycle requirements: targeting, assignment, exposure logging, metric definition, analysis, guardrails, and rollout. The architecture would use deterministic bucketing, durable configuration and audit trails, privacy-conscious telemetry pipelines, and scalable aggregation layers. I would also build validation into the workflow, including sample-ratio mismatch detection, metric-quality checks, and access controls.
I would provide opinionated defaults for randomization, metric windows, confidence intervals, and stopping rules, while exposing advanced controls for experts. The user experience should explain effect size, uncertainty, practical significance, and known limitations in plain language. I would partner with data scientists to validate methods and add automated warnings for common errors such as peeking, underpowered tests, and biased exposure data.
I would align stakeholders on the customer problem, measurable outcomes, constraints, and decision owners before committing to a solution. I would create an incremental roadmap that delivers a valuable foundation early, such as reliable assignment and telemetry, then expand into analysis and AI-assisted workflows. Throughout delivery, I would communicate trade-offs, document architectural decisions, and use adoption and reliability metrics to guide priorities.
I would apply least-privilege access, data classification, retention policies, audit logging, and safeguards for sensitive attributes from the start. The platform should make compliant behavior easy through approved metric catalogs, governed datasets, and review workflows for higher-risk experiments. I would work closely with security, privacy, and legal partners to ensure controls remain practical for product teams.
I would define the workflow's intended user decisions and evaluate it on correctness, usefulness, safety, latency, and user trust. For example, an AI assistant could draft hypotheses or identify telemetry gaps, but recommendations should cite underlying data, communicate uncertainty, and preserve human review for consequential changes. I would use offline benchmarks, structured human evaluation, staged rollout experiments, and monitoring for regressions or unsafe outputs.
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.
At Discord, we believe everyone can find a place where they belong. Our mission is to help make it easy for everyone to find and join meaningful conversations and to make every part of our product feel smart and delightful. Discord is a rapidly scaling company that puts Data at the heart of its decision-making and future growth. The Experimentation team at Discord is responsible for building the tools, systems, and processes that empower Discord employees to continually test hypotheses and improve our product in a data-informed way.
We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to lead the development of Discord’s next-generation experimentation platform, including building state-of-the-art AI assisted experimentation workflows. You will lead and mentor engineers, fostering their growth and enhancing their skills.
What you’ll be doing
- Design, build, and support Discord’s next generation experimentation platform: scope of work would include core services, data pipelines, configuration tooling, statistical analysis tools and UX.
- Collaborate with external (sometimes non-technical) stakeholders and customers throughout the company
- Understand and influence product telemetry practices to support experimentation needs.
- Use your technical expertise to build delightful user experience and high-scale data systems that power internal teams and product features used by many millions of users every day
- Deliver business results by collaborating with stakeholders across Discord to experiment on features, machine learning models and more.
What you should have
- You have 7+ years of experience as a full-stack SWE
- You have built internal tools, and are familiar with A/B testing and statistical frameworks.
- You have experience with experimentation tooling; experience building core parts of experimentation platforms from scratch is a huge plus.
- You have extensive experience leading complex technical projects with successful outcomes; you can take a high-level goal and achieve a shippable solution
- You have built systems with strong data governance controls that respect privacy and security principles.
- You are proficient in Python and SQL. Experience with Typescript or Rust is a plus.
- Experience and with and/or exposure to a variety of datastores (relational, NoSQL, data warehouse solutions)
- Strong product sense and communication skills – you understand your customers and work well cross-functionally.
- A track record of developing engineers at multiple levels, and a habit of tracking industry trends to bring new techniques to technical problems.
Bonus Points
- Experience building human-in-the-loop AI systems and AI product evaluation.
- Experience with cloud-computing platforms such as Google Cloud Platform or AWS.
- Experience with modern data processing stacks.
- Full-stack development or product engineering experience.
- Deep understanding of statistics, data science, or large scale data processing.
The US base salary range for this full-time position is $248,000 to $279,000 + 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.
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