Staff Software Engineer – Ads Infrastructure

📍 Remote (US-based only) | 💼 Full-Time

💰 $248,000 – $279,000 base salary + equity + benefits

About Discord

With over 200 million monthly users, Discord is the leading voice, video, and text platform for communities—especially in gaming. As users spend more than 1.5 billion hours per month engaging with the platform, Discord is expanding into new revenue streams, including a next-generation ad platform that balances user experience with advertiser value.

About the Role

As a Staff Software Engineer, Ads Infrastructure, you will be at the technical forefront of Discord’s newest monetization initiative. This role is about building real-time, large-scale distributed systems that power ad delivery, optimization, and auction mechanics. You’ll tackle high-throughput systems, data-driven ad ranking, and backend architecture—directly contributing to the platform’s long-term business growth.

Why This Role is Exciting

• 🔍 Build and evolve the ad delivery engine at Discord from the ground up
• 📈 Design auction-based marketplaces that optimize ad value and user relevance
• 🧠 Solve real-world challenges at the intersection of distributed systems and mathematical optimization
• 🎮 Influence the experience of millions of users and thousands of advertisers
• 💼 Work closely with infra, data, and product teams to own end-to-end systems

Key Responsibilities

• Architect and scale real-time systems for ad delivery, including pacing, targeting, and ranking
• Design high-throughput data pipelines and leverage event streaming (Kafka, PubSub)
• Implement auctions and market dynamics to ensure optimal ad selection and pricing
• Lead end-to-end project ownership: design, implementation, deployment, and monitoring
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, infra, data platform, and design teams
• Ensure high observability and resilience using tools like Datadog in cloud environments

What You Bring

• 💼 8+ years of backend software engineering experience (Python, Rust, Elixir preferred)
• ⚙️ Experience in large-scale system design, including databases, data caching, and event-driven architectures
• ☁️ Strong background in cloud infrastructure and observability tooling
• 📊 Proficient in real-time data pipelines, especially with Kafka or PubSub
• 👥 2+ years of technical leadership experience, with a track record of mentoring and delivering at scale
• 🧠 Data-first mindset, user empathy, and a passion for algorithm validation and optimization

Why Discord?

• 🌎 Fully remote role in a high-growth tech company
• 💰 Strong compensation with equity and top-tier benefits
• 🕹️ Work on a platform central to the future of gaming and online interaction
• 🌐 Join a team solving real-time, complex, impactful problems in a mission-driven environment

Ready to shape the future of ads at Discord?

👉 Apply Now to become a Staff Software Engineer – Ads Infrastructure and help build the systems that drive Discord’s next major revenue engine.