Staff Data Engineer - Data Infrastructure

Discord has a highly engaged community of millions of daily active users who use the platform for many different reasons, with a shared focus on gaming. This role plays a uniquely important part in shaping the future of gaming by building the data infrastructure that powers clean, tested, and well-documented datasets for the company.

About the role

As a Staff Data Engineer on the Data team, you will drive the technical vision and strategy for Discord’s analytical data infrastructure. This includes building and maintaining enterprise-scale curated datasets and data models that underpin internal decisions, investor metrics, and public reporting. You will work closely with Data Governance, Data Science, Product, Finance, and Engineering teams to ensure rigor, auditability, and precision in all data systems. This role reports to the Director of Data Engineering.

Responsibilities

• Define technical strategy and architectural direction for analytics data infrastructure, building and maintaining enterprise-scale curated datasets and data models.
• Own the design and implementation of data governance programs end-to-end by partnering with stakeholders and translating policy requirements into flexible, configurable infrastructure.
• Design and build sophisticated data abstractions and analytical frameworks using SQL, Python, and modern data stack technologies.
• Develop data quality frameworks, monitoring, anomaly detection, and alerting at massive scale, with governance, lineage tracking, and change management rigor appropriate for externally reported numbers.
• Drive adoption of consistent data modeling patterns, naming conventions, documentation norms, and metric governance standards across the data organization.
• Lead cross-functional technical initiatives across product verticals and mentor engineers to accelerate delivery and harden data systems.
• Navigate ambiguity and make sound technical decisions with incomplete information, balancing short-term delivery with long-term infrastructure investment.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in data and software engineering with a strong focus on building curated, consumer-facing datasets.
• 7+ years of experience in designing, developing, and maintaining data infrastructure used by data teams at scale.
• Expert-level SQL and strong Python skills, with solid fundamentals in version control and CI/CD.
• Proven experience implementing data quality audits, monitoring systems, and automated remediation for massive datasets.
• Strong business acumen and communication skills, comfortable translating ambiguous business questions into concrete metric definitions and explaining complex implementations to diverse audiences.
• Track record of hands-on collaboration with Data Science, Finance, and Product teams.

Bonus Points

• Passion for Discord or online communities.
• Experience building or contributing to a semantic layer or metrics store.
• Experience with modern analytics and data engineering tools and workflows (dbt, BigQuery, or similar).
• Experience defining and governing metric standards across a data organization.
• Experience with reporting infrastructure subject to external audit or SOX compliance.

Pay

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $245,000 to $279,000 + equity + benefits. Individual pay is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

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 friendships around games and shared interests, and helps developers build and grow their businesses.