# Software Engineer, Distributed Systems

**Company:** [Discord](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/discord)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $160k – $180k/yr
**Experience:** 2+ years
**Skills:** Distributed Systems, Backend Systems, Monitoring, Alerting, Open Source, Elixir, GCP, AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes
**Posted:** 2026-06-03

> Discord is seeking a Software Engineer to build and operate large-scale, reliable, and performant distributed systems. This role involves collaborating with product teams, managing infrastructure, and ensuring the platform's overall reliability and performance.

## Job Description

## What You'll Be Doing

* Build and operate large-scale, reliable and performant distributed systems.
* Collaborate with product teams to create new features.
* Ensure Discord “just works”.
* Write code but also manage our infrastructure.
* Work with a talented team of engineers who have built one of the largest communication platforms in the world.

## What you should have

* 2+ years of experience writing and designing backend systems.
* Experience solving complex distributed system problems.
* Experience operating and maintaining critical tier 0 services.
* Knowledge of monitoring and alerting best practices.
* Familiar with open source software, and not afraid to dig into the source code of a library to find the answer you're looking for.

## Bonus Points

* Experience with Elixir.
* Experience working with systems deployed in a cloud environment (GCP, AWS, etc.)
* Knowledge of devops tools like Salt, Terraform or k8s.
* You have built or contributed to open source projects.
* You are a Discord power user and have built bots or apps interacting with our platform.

## Compensation

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $160,000 to $180,000 + equity + benefits. 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 US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include equity, or benefits.

## Similar roles

- [Software Engineer I / II](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/0bb9e447-0b4d-4546-9fb2-8cc2ae9172e2) - Giga - New York, NY - $160k – $250k/yr
- [Software Engineer, Performance](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/13ae02f7-ad1d-4e49-893e-0c869a32715e) - Nuro - Mountain View, CA - $160k – $241k/yr
- [Software Engineer - Backend](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/cab7fa73-556d-44ec-8954-962378b3a7b4) - Snowflake - Menlo Park, CA - $157k – $230k/yr
- [Backend Engineer, Moderation Enforcement](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/1eb6679c-b2d3-4bb9-a6d6-cb03f0961b12) - Reddit - Remote - $164k – $230k/yr
- [Software Engineer - Kafka](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/ce6b64b3-84a4-47b9-a6a0-7c91d8aa0370) - Applied Intuition - Sunnyvale, CA - $153k – $222k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/c4105041-5e18-4edd-87cc-ac05912c625e
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/c4105041-5e18-4edd-87cc-ac05912c625e