Principal Full Stack Engineer Jobs in San Mateo, CA

INTRODUCTION

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 launched its Social Commerce team in August 2025 and by the end of the year, we shipped an MVP which was extremely successful. In 2026 we've been scaling to more games, adding more features, and extending capabilities.

Discord Social Commerce lets players find, buy, and gift in-game digital goods from chat, friends' Wishlists, within official game communities on Discord. The idea is to bring commerce natively into the social spaces where players already hang out, rather than routing them to external storefronts.

How it's done?

Developers integrate through the Discord Social SDK, which includes social layer integration and account linking capabilities. Once connected, players can browse and buy brand-specific gaming skins, costumes, emotes, emojis and more, with the option to gift each other items via Discord DMs, or purchase items in-game through Discord's account-linking system.

ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES

What You'll Be Doing

• Building cross-platform purchase flows, social gifting experiences, and commerce surfaces that meet users where they already are — in voice, in chat, on mobile.
• Collaborating with the other engineers on your team to write, review, and ship elegant and scalable code. You take pride in the fact that your code will be used by millions and millions of people!
• Leading projects through the whole life cycle: scoping, designing, building, shipping, and iterating based on experiment results.
• Working directly with game studio partners to understand their needs, answer technical questions, and improve the tools we build for them.
• Collaborating closely with product, design, and game developers to cut through ambiguity on a product where the playbook is still being written.
• Working with product managers, designers, and partner managers to cut through ambiguity and find the way forward.
• Using your attention to detail to continually raise the quality bar of the software we write.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

What you should have:

• 5+ years experience as a software engineer.
• Expertise with at least a couple parts of our tech stack: Python, Typescript/React, Elixir, Rust being the main areas. You are comfortable switching across stacks or learning new ones.
• You have a sense for product and design. We don't operate in silos, and you'll be collaborating closely with cross-functional peers. You should be able to express opinions and collaborate to make something great.
• Comfort with ambiguity and experimentation. This team ships A/B tests, reads results, and changes direction. You should be someone who thrives in that environment rather than waiting for a fully-baked spec.
• You actively leverage AI coding tools to accelerate your productivity.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

[Optional] Bonus Points

• Experience with game development.
• Experience with mobile development.
• Experience leveraging a cloud platform (GCP, Amazon, or Azure) to serve as the backend infrastructure for a product.

COMPENSATION

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $196,000 to $220,500 + 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.

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.

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