Senior Staff Software Engineer, Audio/Video Products

Discord

Discord

Software Engineering
San Francisco, CA, USA
Posted 6+ months ago

Discord Audio & Video engineering team owns the technological primitives that empower voice and video product features across all the user platforms from desktop to mobile and game console. We are looking for a Senior Staff Engineer to join our high-impact team.

You will oversee the technical roadmap for all the audio and video products development, working across all major customer platforms. You will work with teams across the organization including Infrastructure, Product Engineering, and Data Science, to ensure that the technical strategy meets our goals.

What you'll be doing:

  • Help the engineering leader to create departmental vision and define short and long term strategic technology roadmap
  • Work on the most difficult problems in audio/video real-time communication that set us apart as the best-in-class voice and video app
  • Architect and advocate elegant and maintainable infrastructure and improve engineering efficiencies
  • Mentor other engineers and help them to grow and level up

What you should have:

  • 10+ years experience working on large, cross-platform software projects.
  • Excellent programming skills writing high performance code in C++ or Rust.
  • Intimate knowledge of media pipeline on multiple client platforms including Windows, MacOS, mobile or game consoles.
  • Deep experience with Audio and Video, understanding raw audio/video formats and common codecs, and the differences.
  • Excellent knowledge of performance metrics such as CPU, GPU and memory management.
  • Strong problem solving skills, troubleshooting deeply subtle problems.
  • Strong experience of networking and transport protocols, understanding the differences.
  • You enjoy coming up with pragmatic solutions to concrete problems using first principles thinking.
  • You are obsessed with user impact and pursue craftsmanship with high quality of work.
  • You have strong communication skills and thrive in small, collaborative, and energetic teams.

Bonus Points:

  • Working experience with WebRTC, SDP, SRTP, DTLS.
  • Experience with game development and reverse engineering

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $256,000 to $301,000 + 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.

Benefits and Perks

  • Comprehensive medical insurance including Health, Dental and Vision (plus up to $20,000 for gender affirmation procedures)
  • Mental health resources and quarterly wellness stipends
  • 16+ paid holidays, 4 weeks of PTO + use-what-you-need sick days
  • Paid parental leave (plus fertility, adoption and other family planning benefits)
  • Flexible long-term work options (remote and hybrid)
  • Volunteer time off
  • A diverse slate of Employee Resource Groups
  • Plus commuter contributions and other perks for office-based employees

About Us

Discord is a voice, video and text app that helps friends and communities come together to hang out and explore their interests — from artists and activists, to study groups, sneakerheads, plant parents, and more. With 150 million monthly users across 19 million active communities, called servers, Discord has grown to become one of the most popular communications services in the world. Discord was built without selling ads or user data and instead, offers a premium subscription called Nitro that gives users special perks like higher quality streams and fun customizations.

We’re working toward an inclusive world where no one feels like an outsider, where genuine human connection is a click, text chat, or voice call away. A place where everyone can find belonging. Challenging? Heck yes. Rewarding? Double heck yes. It’s a mission that gives us the chance to positively impact millions of people all over the world. So if this strikes a chord with you, come build belonging with us!