Staff Software Engineer, Audio/Video Infrastructure

Discord is used by over 200 million people every month for many different reasons, but there’s one thing that nearly everyone does on our platform: play video games. Over 90% of our users play games, spending a combined 1.5 billion hours playing thousands of unique titles on Discord each month. Discord plays a uniquely important role in the future of gaming. We are focused on making it easier and more fun for people to talk and hang out before, during, and after playing games.

Discord is looking for an engineer excited about building the software that powers our realtime Audio & Video infrastructure. The Audio & Video Infrastructure team builds and maintain our WebRTC software and scales the system that powers it for all our users. Your role will have a significant impact on the quality of experience for all Discord users utilizing these features. This opportunity calls for an engineer ready to tackle challenging problems, drive improvements, and contribute to the technology that connects millions of people globally.

What you'll do:

• Build large scale realtime Audio & Video systems
• Scale the system and optimize quality and reliability for users
• Transitioning our infrastructure to running on the edge for lower latency
• Collaborate with product teams to add new features.
• Work with a talented team of engineers who have built one of the largest communication platforms in the world.

What you have:

• 5+ years of experience working with video infrastructure
• Prior experience working with large scale systems
• Experience working with WebRTC, HLS or DASH
• You understand observability and monitoring and leverages this to solve system issues
• You excel in undefined environments and get excited about finding solutions to complex technical challenges
• Comfortable reading and writing code in large existing codebases

Bonus Points:

• Experience with Elixir
• Familiarity with codecs such as H.264, HEVC and AV1
• Experience with network protocols like RTMP, HTTP, UDP and QUIC
• You have built or contributed to open source projects.

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a 100% remote role. We are looking for someone to work in our San Francisco office at least 1 day per week.

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. 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!

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