Senior Recruiter - Lisbon

Discord is opening its first engineering office in Lisbon, which will be home to brand new, stand-alone Core Tech teams working on the infrastructure, audio/video, performance, and security systems that keep Discord running at scale. We're looking for the founding recruiter on the ground: the person who personally hires the engineers who make this office real and builds the local recruiting foundation as we grow from a small founding group to around 30 engineers by the end of 2027. That's the first milestone, not the end state.

You'll be part of Discord's centralized, US-based recruiting team and the only recruiter in Lisbon for a while. You'll have an established team and hiring process behind you, but you'll need to set your own priorities, make calls on the ground, and build what's missing. You'll keep a daily overlap window with the US team and Bay Area hiring managers, typically late afternoon Lisbon time; the rest of your schedule is yours.

The zero-to-one opportunity

There is no local playbook yet. You'll write it while running searches. You'll be one of the very first Discord employees in Portugal, with real influence over who we hire, how we hire, and how Discord shows up in the Lisbon market.

What you'll do

• Own full-cycle recruiting for Core Tech engineering and supporting roles in Lisbon which includes sourcing, screening, interview coordination, and closing senior and staff engineers in a competitive market.
• Be the local face of Discord recruiting: build our employer brand in Lisbon through meetups, community events, university and agency relationships, and moments like Web Summit.
• Adapt our hiring process for the Portuguese market, offer structure, interview loop, candidate experience while partnering closely with People, Legal, and Compensation.
• Act as a trusted talent partner to hiring managers and Lisbon site leadership; bring market data, set a high and calibrated bar, and push back when needed.
• Build the foundations that make recruiting repeatable including Greenhouse (ATS) hygiene, pipeline reporting, sourcing operations, market intelligence.
• Independently track and report pipeline health and hiring pace [to stakeholders, Recruiting Leadership and/or Core Tech leadership] on a regular cadence.
• Help decide what recruiting support Lisbon needs as volume grows, whether that's agencies, contract sourcing, or additional hires.

What success looks like (first 6–12 months)

• A localized, compliant, candidate-friendly offer and interview process for Portugal is up and running.
• Real pipeline and employer-brand presence in Lisbon which could include agency, community, and university partnerships established, and events and conferences rhythm that turn into actual candidates.
• You've personally signed the founding cohort of Core Tech engineers and are tracking to the 2027 hiring plan.
• Hiring managers in Lisbon and SF see you as the person who knows this market.
• Systems and reporting are in place to scale recruiting without starting over.

What you should have

• Several years of full-cycle recruiting experience, ideally in-house at a high-growth technology company.
• A track record hiring senior and staff software or infrastructure engineers in a competitive market.
• Deep, current knowledge of the Lisbon engineering talent market.
• Comfort operating on your own, across time zones, with ambiguity - you build the roadmap rather than wait for one.
• Fluent English plus one of the following: fluent Portuguese, or a track record of successfully recruiting for a technology company in Portugal without it - meaning you already have the relationships, agency network and working knowledge of Portuguese hiring norms this role will need.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to represent Discord and close candidates.

Bonus points

• Experience standing up recruiting for a new office, market, or team from scratch.
• Experience recruiting for a US-headquartered company, ideally Bay Area. You know where US tech culture and Portuguese working norms differ on pace, communication style, hours, hiring process, and pay structure, and you can translate in both directions.
• Existing relationships in the Portuguese tech ecosystem.
• Experience hiring infrastructure, audio/video, performance, or security engineers.
• Familiarity with Greenhouse and modern sourcing/AI tooling.
• You understand the gaming industry and are a Discord user.

Candidates must reside in or be willing to relocate to the Lisbon Area and attend the office 3 days a week.