Staff Software Engineer, Audio/Video Infrastructure

🧑‍💼 Role: Staff Software Engineer – Audio/Video Infrastructure

📍 Location: San Francisco Bay Area (on-site or willing to relocate)

🕒 Type: Full-time

💰 Salary: $248,000 – $279,000 + equity + benefits

👥 Team: Audio/Video Infrastructure – Real-Time Communications (RTC)

🎯 Role Overview

This position is at the heart of Discord's real-time media stack, where you’ll design, build, and scale low-latency, high-reliability WebRTC-based audio/video systems used by 200M+ monthly users. This role is highly impactful—your work directly affects core voice and video experiences on the platform.

You’ll collaborate with a world-class engineering team to solve complex performance, scalability, and latency challenges, and help transition Discord’s RTC infrastructure to edge-based architecture.

🛠️ What You’ll Be Doing

• Build Real-Time Infrastructure
• Architect and develop scalable, distributed RTC systems that power voice/video on Discord.
• Scale & Optimize A/V Quality
• Improve quality of experience, reliability, and performance, especially under high concurrency (millions of concurrent calls).
• Edge Deployment for Low Latency
• Play a key role in transitioning infrastructure to edge nodes, improving media latency globally.
• New Media Features
• Partner with product and UX teams to deliver innovative new A/V features and improvements.
• System Observability & Debugging
• Build observability and diagnostic tools to detect and resolve real-time performance and quality issues.

✅ What You Should Have

• 5+ Years in Video Infrastructure Engineering
• Deep experience with designing, building, and maintaining media systems at scale.
• Large-Scale Systems Experience
• Proven history of working in high-throughput, low-latency production systems.
• WebRTC or Streaming Protocol Expertise
• Comfort with WebRTC, HLS, or DASH protocols; experience designing systems around them.
• Observability Mindset
• You know how to measure and monitor real-time system health (e.g., jitter, packet loss, latency).
• Codebase Agility
• You’re comfortable navigating large codebases and writing clean, maintainable systems code.

⭐ Bonus Points

• Experience with Elixir (a major part of Discord's backend stack)
• Knowledge of media codecs (e.g., H.264, AV1, HEVC)
• Familiarity with networking protocols: RTMP, UDP, QUIC, HTTP
• Contributions to open source RTC/media projects
• Experience optimizing edge computing or cloud-native media infrastructure

💵 Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $248K – $279K
• Equity: Strong RSU or options package
• Perks: Top-tier healthcare, 401(k), wellness stipend, flexible PTO, and more
• Office Location: Bay Area required (Alameda, San Francisco, Santa Clara, etc.)

🧠 Why This Role Matters

Discord is one of the largest real-time communication platforms globally. Audio and video are mission-critical to its product, and your work will impact everything from game nights and classrooms to live events and global communities.