Senior Software Engineer, Data Platform - Lisbon

Discord is opening an engineering hub in Lisbon, our first dedicated one outside of our San Francisco HQ. And we’re building it from the ground up. As a member of our founding team, you’ll help set the direction for teams across Core Technology, advancing work that keeps Discord reliable for millions of people around the world, helps our engineers move faster, and protects our platform at scale. You’ll also help shape the culture of the hub so it feels unmistakably Discord while developing a distinctly Lisbon identity of its own.

We're looking for someone who gets excited about building data infrastructure at massive scale and cares deeply about the gaming communities we serve. Someone with passion for building lovable products for Discord users and Discord engineers. We’re building the next generation Data Platform that powers decisions for one of the most vibrant platforms in the world.

If you're the kind of Software Engineer who lights up when talking about distributed systems, cares deeply about user privacy, grounding decisions in data, and wants your work to directly impact millions of gamers worldwide, we want to talk to you.

To learn more about Discord’s Data Platform, read our engineering blog, including how we built our modern data stack leveraging open-source tools!

What You'll Be Doing

• Build and maintain data infrastructure processing petabytes of data across millions of users
• Write clean, well-tested code for data ingestion, transformation, and serving systems
• Own projects end-to-end. From design through deployment and production support
• Collaborate with data scientists, engineers, and product teams to deliver solutions that power Discord's insights
• Apply 80/20 thinking to challenge requirements, cut unnecessary complexity, and deliver the optimal solution at the right time
• Mentor teammates through code reviews, RFCs, and shared technical knowledge that makes the whole team better

What You Should Have

• 5+ years of software engineering experience with strong programming skills in Python, Java, Rust, Go, or similar
• Hands-on experience building or operating data infrastructure like pipelines, streaming systems, orchestration, or data warehousing at scale (BigQuery, Kafka, Spark, Flink, Airflow, Dagster, or similar)
• Proven track record of delivering complex, multi-phase projects autonomously. You've owned the hard ones and handled edge cases, failure modes, and scale before they became problems.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills, including with XFN partners. You write clear technical documents, drive alignment, and bring people along on technical decisions
• Growth mindset. You’ve failed, learned, and shipped something better because of it

Bonus Points

• Passion for Discord and gaming
• Familiarity with data governance, privacy compliance, or cost optimization in large-scale data environments

Candidates must reside in or be willing to relocate to the Lisbon Area and attend the office 3-4 days a week.