Staff Software Engineer, Machine Learning (Safety)

Discord is seeking a Staff Machine Learning Engineer for its Safety ML team. This technical leadership role involves designing, developing, and maintaining AI/ML infrastructure and services to enhance platform safety. The engineer will collaborate with cross-functional teams, define technical strategy, and apply state-of-the-art ML to detect and prevent adversarial abuse and harmful content, influencing the company's safety direction and raising the technical bar for the team.

Must Have

• Serve as technical lead and mentor for the Safety ML team.
• Define and drive the Safety ML team’s technical strategy and roadmap.
• Ensure scalable, robust, high-quality ML systems through technical reviews.
• Collaborate with product, data science, policy, legal, and engineering partners.
• Tackle complex, high-impact safety challenges like adversarial abuse.
• Develop cutting-edge ML techniques to detect and prevent harm.
• Influence company direction on safety, communicating trade-offs to leadership.
• 5+ years experience in ML engineering or applied ML roles.
• 2+ years experience applying ML in Trust & Safety.
• Strong Python coding skills and fluency in ML frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow).
• Proven experience building performant machine learning systems at scale.
• Ability to think from first principles and provide pragmatic solutions.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, ML, Statistics, or related field.

Perks & Benefits

• Equity
• Benefits
• Reasonable accommodations during the interview process

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.

We are seeking an accomplished and experienced Staff Machine Learning Engineer – Safety ML to join our dynamic team. As a technical lead of the Safety ML team, you will be responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining our data and AI/ML infrastructure and services. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, including data scientists, software engineers, MLEs and product managers, to deliver modern and cutting-edge solutions that improve safety on the platform. This role reports to the Senior Manager of Machine Learning, Safety.

What You'll Be Doing

• Serve as the team’s technical lead and mentor, guiding ICs through design, experimentation, and implementation while raising the technical bar.
• Define and drive the Safety ML team’s technical strategy and roadmap.
• Set the bar in technical reviews, including code, design, and architecture, ensuring the team builds scalable, robust, and high-quality ML systems.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, data science, policy, legal, and engineering partners to align on safety goals and deliver effective solutions.
• Tackle the most complex and high-impact challenges in safety, including adversarial abuse, harmful content detection, and evolving threat vectors.
• Develop cutting-edge safety techniques, applying state-of-the-art ML to detect and prevent harm while staying ahead of emerging abuse patterns
• Influence the company’s direction on safety, clearly communicating trade-offs and technical constraints to senior leadership and stakeholders.

What you should have

• 5+ years of experience in ML engineering or applied ML roles.
• 2+ years of experience applying ML in Trust & Safety to counter adversarial actors.
• Strong coding skills in Python and fluency in ML frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow.
• Proven experience building performant machine learning systems at scale and have driven the execution of large, impactful projects from ideation to production.
• Ability to think from first principles, approaching complex problems with creativity, clear reasoning, and pragmatic solutions.
• A growth mindset: seeking feedback, reflecting on decisions, and continuously improving.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with a history of partnering effectively across engineering, data science, legal, policy, and product teams.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related field (Physics, Math, Operations Research, etc.)

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $272,000 to $306,000 + 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!

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.

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