Senior Software Engineer - Audio/Video Infrastructure

Discord is looking for a Senior Software Engineer who is passionate about building and scaling the software that powers our realtime audio and video communication infrastructure. The Audio & Video Infrastructure team builds and maintains our WebRTC-based systems and scales the infrastructure that enables millions of concurrent voice and video conversations.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll work on technology that directly impacts how millions of people communicate daily. From casual voice chats to large-scale community events and high-stakes esports tournaments, your code will power conversations that matter. You'll tackle interesting technical challenges at scale - optimizing for performance and reliability, handling traffic patterns across the globe, and building systems resilient enough to handle Discord's massive growth. This is an opportunity to work with cutting-edge distributed systems technology while having a real, measurable impact on user experience.

What you'll do:

• Build and optimize distributed systems that handle millions of concurrent users through our audio & video infrastructure, focusing on implementation of scalable solutions.
• Implement performance improvements across both control and media layers, improving latency, reliability, and user experience metrics.
• Contribute to next-generation infrastructure architecture that pushes the boundaries of real-time communication.
• Develop and maintain infrastructure automation, monitoring, and observability solutions to ensure reliable deployments and operations.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, such as the AV Clients team, to deliver features and product launches.
• Debug and resolve complex production issues across distributed systems, from infrastructure to application layer.

What you should have:

• 4+ years of experience working on large scale distributed systems, including monitoring and performance optimization.
• Strong programming skills in languages like Rust, Python, C++, and/or Elixir.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems concepts including replication, partitioning, and consistency models.
• Strong debugging skills and ability to troubleshoot issues across the full stack.
• Enjoyment in coming up with pragmatic solutions to concrete problems using first principles thinking.
• Experience with cloud providers (AWS, GCP) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Enjoyment in coming up with pragmatic solutions to concrete problems using first principles thinking.
• Collaborative mindset with experience working in cross-functional engineering teams

Bonus points:

• Experience with Elixir in production environments.
• Hands-on experience with WebRTC, HLS, or DASH streaming protocols.
• Knowledge of network protocols and understanding of networking fundamentals (TCP/UDP, packet loss, jitter, etc).
• Familiarity with audio/video infrastructure or media server technologies (SFU/MCU architectures)
• Contributions to open source projects in the audio/video space

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.