Communication, Social Media, Gaming

Engineering Manager, Machine Learning (Safety)

RemoteRemoteFull TimeManager / Head$272,000–$340,000 /yrPosted 2 months ago

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Required skills

Machine Learning
Safety
detection systems
content understanding
account integrity
platform abuse
production safety models
enforcement decisions
label quality
golden sets

Nice to have

abuse/fraud detection
content classification
behavioral modeling
graph-based modeling
LLM-based classification systems
first principles thinker

Role summary

Discord is seeking a highly technical and mission-driven Engineering Manager to lead its Safety ML team. This role involves building and leading a team of ML engineers, driving the technical vision and roadmap for safety detection systems, and owning the end-to-end lifecycle of production ML models. The ideal candidate will have 5+ years of ML engineering experience and 3+ years of management experience, with hands-on expertise in areas like abuse detection or content classification. The role requires a proven ability to ship ML systems at scale and a passion for coaching engineers, while also being able to contribute technically when needed. This is a hybrid role with a competitive salary and benefits package.

Discord has a highly engaged community of millions of daily active users who use the platform for many different reasons, but there’s one thing that nearly everyone does: play video games. Discord plays a uniquely important role in the future of gaming, and we are focused on making it easier and more fun for people to hang out before, during, and after playing games.

Discord's Safety ML team builds the machine learning systems that protect 200M+ users. The team's mission is to make Discord a place where people can build genuine friendships without exposure to harm, at a scale where manual review alone can never keep up.

We're looking for a highly technical, hands-on, and mission-driven Engineering Manager to lead our Safety ML team. As the manager responsible for Safety ML, you will own the detection systems that sit between attackers and our users; real-time and batch models for content understanding, account integrity, and platform abuse.

What You'll Be Doing

Build and lead an exceptional team of highly-engaged ML engineers by hiring, coaching, and instilling a sense of ownership and impact.

Drive the technical vision and roadmap for Safety ML by collaborating with your team and partners across Trust & Safety, Product, Policy, Legal, and Data Science.

Own the end-to-end lifecycle of production safety models: defining new capabilities, measuring performance, and monitoring the operational health of systems that make millions of enforcement decisions per day.

Manage processes and leverage your technical expertise to continually raise the bar and ensure your team delivers extraordinary results.

Partner with Trust & Safety on label quality, golden sets, and automating manual investigations.

Work with other Engineering Managers to continuously improve the Engineering organization and uphold our workplace philosophy.

What you should have

You have 5+ years of experience as a Machine Learning Engineer, Data Scientist, or Applied Scientist.

You have 3+ years of experience as an Engineering Manager and successfully managed a team of 5+ engineers.

You have hands-on depth in at least one of: abuse/fraud detection, content classification, behavioral modeling, graph-based modeling, or LLM-based classification systems.

You have strong communication skills and the ability to work well cross-functionally.

You thrive in ambiguous environments and get excited about figuring out solutions to complex problems, and then executing on them.

You are a first principles thinker that can work with others to come up with pragmatic solutions.

You have a proven record of shipping ML systems to production at scale.

You are passionate about coaching and leading other engineers, but can roll up your sleeves and get elbow deep in code when needed.

You keep up with the industry trends and continuously identify new technologies to leverage to solve technical problems

The base salary range for this full-time position is listed below. This position will also be eligible for equity and benefits. Benefits include medical, dental, and vision insurance; a 401(k) plan; life and disability insurance; paid time off; and paid parental leave. Our salary ranges are determined by role and level. Within the range, individual pay is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Please note that the compensation details listed in role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include equity, or benefits. Applications for this role are accepted on an ongoing basis.

Base Salary$272,000—$340,000 USD

Why Discord? Discord plays a uniquely important role in the future of gaming. We're a multiplatform, multigenerational and multiplayer platform that helps people deepen their friendships around games and shared interests, and helps developers build and grow their businesses. We believe games give us a way to have fun with our favorite people, whether listening to music together or grinding in competitive matches for diamond rank. Join us in our mission! Your future is just a click away!

Discord is committed to inclusion and providing reasonable accommodations during the interview process. We want you to feel set up for success, so if you are in need of reasonable accommodations, please let your recruiter know.

Please see our Applicant and Candidate Privacy Policy for details regarding Discord’s collection and usage of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking HERE.

Sample Discord interview questions

1
Design a distributed task scheduler.
system designmedium
2
Implement a system for live processing of customer reviews and feedback.
system designmedium
3
Build a Discord-like Chat Server
system designhard
4
Find the minimum path sum from top-left to bottom-right in a grid. Input: grid = [[1,2,3],[4,5,6]] Output: 12 Explanation: The optimal path moves along 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 6, resulting in a minimum accumulated sum of 12.
codingmedium

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