Senior Staff Software Engineer, Client Platform

🧑‍💻 Role Overview

Title: Senior Staff Software Engineer – Client Platform

Location: San Francisco Bay Area (onsite or hybrid likely required)

Type: Full-time

Base Salary Range: $304,000 – $342,000 (plus equity & benefits)

Team: Client Platform & Performance

Reports to: Director of Engineering, Client Platform & Performance

🎯 Role Mission

To define and lead the technical strategy for Discord’s client performance across mobile, desktop, and web, ensuring a seamless, fast, and scalable user experience for 200M+ monthly users.

This role is both deeply technical and highly influential: you’ll be setting engineering direction, mentoring other senior engineers, and driving systemic performance improvements across the entire stack.

🔧 Core Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership & Strategy
• Lead the technical roadmap and architecture for client platforms.
• Set performance and scalability standards across mobile, desktop, and web clients.
• System & Platform Optimization
• Build and maintain foundational client libraries and infrastructure.
• Lead performance optimization across the React Native stack, and help evolve it across other platforms (iOS, Android, desktop, web).
• Quality Ownership
• Own engineering quality and performance benchmarks.
• Establish processes, tooling, and observability for consistent performance improvements.
• Mentorship & Influence
• Serve as a technical mentor and multiplier for client engineers.
• Help upskill the team and foster technical leadership.

🧠 Key Qualifications

• Experience:
• 10+ years in client-side engineering, ideally across mobile, desktop, and web.
• Proven success improving end-to-end performance in high-scale, user-facing apps.
• Tech Stack:
• Strong proficiency with JavaScript/TypeScript, React Native.
• Familiarity with Swift, Kotlin, or C++ for mobile and low-level optimization.
• Comfortable using profiling, instrumentation, and performance tools.
• Leadership:
• Strong technical communication, cross-functional influence, and architectural vision.
• Experience in establishing best practices for quality, accessibility, and performance at scale.

🌟 Bonus Points

• Contributions to open-source or leadership in React Native or performance communities.
• Expertise in internationalization, particularly optimizing apps in low-bandwidth or mobile-first regions.
• Familiarity with game dev tools, game engines, or real-time systems (audio/video/chat).
• Experience working on platforms with millions of daily active users.

🚀 Why This Role Is Exciting

• Lead performance for a platform with massive scale (200M+ MAUs).
• Work at the intersection of gaming, real-time systems, and social tech.
• Opportunity to impact core product experience used by a global, diverse audience.
• Join a team that values technical depth, mentorship, and engineering craftsmanship.

🕹️ Why Discord?

• Central platform for gaming culture, but growing far beyond that.
• Mission-driven team focused on building belonging and shared experiences.
• Strong engineering culture with high-impact work and visibility.
• Competitive comp, stock options, and strong equity upside.