Staff Security Engineer, Platform Security

Staff Security Engineer - Remote Crypto Jobs at Discord (Platform Security Engineering Team)

Location: Remote

About Discord: Discord is where over 200 million people come together to connect, create, and play. With more than 90% of our users gaming, Discord is at the forefront of the gaming industry and plays a critical role in empowering individuals to find belonging and build lasting connections through shared experiences. Our platform ensures that these communications are secure and private, trusted by millions to keep their interactions safe from malicious actors.

The Platform Security Engineering team at Discord is dedicated to protecting our users and the systems that make Discord possible. We focus on making security as seamless and simple as possible, allowing our teams to work securely while empowering our users to feel safe on the platform.

About the Role: We are looking for a Staff Security Engineer to join our team, reporting to the Platform Security Engineering Manager. In this code-forward role, you’ll use your deep security expertise to reduce security risks and build secure systems that scale with Discord’s growth. You will be instrumental in shaping the security strategy, implementing best practices, and ensuring Discord continues to be a safe platform for millions of users worldwide.

This is a highly autonomous, horizontally-integrated security role, where you'll guide strategy, lead projects, and collaborate across teams to create secure and scalable infrastructure. Your work will directly impact everything from identity and access management (IAM) to secure software supply chains, ensuring our systems are secure from development to production.

What You’ll Do:

• Guide Strategy & Lead Projects: Take ownership of key security initiatives, leading software engineering projects on a small but highly impactful security team.
• Consult on Security Matters: Provide security guidance on risk assessments, architectural designs, threat models, and code reviews, balancing security with business needs.
• Develop Secure Infrastructure: Build and apply secure baselines for both cloud and bare-metal resources.
• Secure the Software Supply Chain: Ensure the integrity of our software supply chain, from developer laptops to version control, CI/CD, and production.
• IAM Systems Ownership: Design and build user-friendly IAM systems promoting least privilege access.
• Vulnerability Management: Identify and manage third-party vulnerabilities while supporting the rapid growth of Product Engineering.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Partner with teams across Discord for security monitoring, incident response, and overall platform security.

Example Projects:

• Support and scale IAM at Discord, helping manage internal authorization (see Discord’s IAM Blog).
• Build automated tooling to scan our infrastructure for vulnerabilities.
• Develop service-to-service authentication and authorization for Discord’s next-generation developer platform.

What We’re Looking For:

• 7+ years of experience building and operating production systems and infrastructure.
• 5+ years of experience in software development, particularly in languages like Python or Rust.
• 4+ years of experience securing systems with millions of users.
• Tech leadership experience: Led projects with 3+ engineers spanning multiple quarters.
• Experience designing and building user-facing software for customers beyond your immediate team.
• Familiarity with securing cloud-based environments (e.g., GCP, Cloudflare).
• Experience with technologies like OCI, Docker, Kubernetes, and container orchestration.
• In-depth knowledge of authentication and authorization protocols like RBAC, OAuth 2.0, OIDC/SAML, and Zero Trust network architectures.
• Experience with build and CI/CD technologies such as Bazel, Buildkite, Terraform.

Bonus Points:

• Experience in multi-cloud environments.
• Expertise in securing distributed systems on GCP and Cloudflare.
• Experience building and operating a service mesh (e.g., Envoy, Istio, Linkerd).
• Experience with VMs, bare-metal hosts (e.g., Linux, Salt).
• Knowledge of applying Kubernetes security policies (e.g., OPA Gatekeeper, Kyverno).

Salary & Benefits:

• US Base Salary Range: $223,000 to $245,500 (depending on experience and location).
• Equity and benefits package included.
• Remote flexibility with opportunities to work from anywhere.

Why Discord? Discord plays a unique role in shaping the future of gaming, offering a platform where people connect, create, and have fun together. As we continue to grow, we’re looking for passionate individuals to help us maintain our commitment to security, privacy, and user empowerment. Join our team and make an impact on millions of users around the world.

Your future is just a click away. Apply now!