Engineering Manager, Notifications
Leads a full-stack engineering team building and operating Discord's scalable notifications platform using Elixir, Python, and Kubernetes. Partners cross-functionally to optimize engagement and retention through experimentation, while hands-on with technical direction and team growth.
About the job
What You'll Be Doing
- Lead a team of full-stack engineers building and operating the notifications platform — Elixir services, Python backends, pubsub pipelines, and the Kubernetes infrastructure underneath them
- Set technical direction for notifications infrastructure and ensure systems scale reliably as volume and complexity grow
- Partner with Product, Design, Data Science, and Marketing to define and execute the notifications roadmap
- Use experimentation and metrics to drive continuous improvement in notification engagement, retention, and long-term user trust
- Build a high-performing team through hiring, coaching, and instilling engineering best practices
- Partner with platform consumers across Discord to evolve the primitives other teams depend on to reach our users
- Partner with engineering leadership on strategic planning and organizational improvement
What you should have
- 5+ years of experience as a Software Engineer, with significant time building and operating backend or infrastructure systems at scale
- 2+ years of experience as an Engineering Manager
- Comfort owning production systems built on technologies like Elixir, Python, pubsub/streaming pipelines, and Kubernetes, with strong intuition for reliability, throughput, and cost at scale
- Experience collaborating closely with product managers, designers, data scientists, and other engineers to define and ship solutions
- A track record of growing engineers and helping team members succeed
- Strong ownership mindset — you stay close to the technical decisions your team makes and can discuss them in depth with anyone at Discord
- Ability to drive a culture of 80/20 thinking, fast iteration, and high-quality delivery
Bonus points
- Experience leading teams that own shared platforms or primitives consumed by other engineering teams
- Experience shipping push notifications or other re-engagement systems at consumer scale, including familiarity with deliverability, throttling, and policy considerations
- Full-stack experience across both frontend and backend development
- Strong track record of driving measurable impact through experimentation and data-driven decision making
- Demonstrated success driving engagement and long-term retention through messaging or re-engagement surfaces
The US base salary range for this full-time position is $248,000 to $279,000 + equity + benefits.
Skills
Elixir, Python, Kubernetes, Pub/Sub, Streaming Pipelines, Backend Development, Infrastructure, Full-Stack Development, Push Notifications, Experimentation
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