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Engineering Manager, Machine Learning (Safety)

Lead the Safety ML team at Discord to develop machine learning systems that protect over 200M users from harm.

Location
San Francisco Bay Area (or Remote U.S.)
Compensation
$272k–$306k/yr
Level
lead
Type
full time

Posted by employer 1 month ago

First seen on Joblaze 1 month ago

Last verified on the company career page 1 day ago

Role intensity

10% coding — mostly leadership/strategy

Requirements

Experience
5+ years

Not disclosed in this posting: work arrangement, visa sponsorship.

Benefits

Equity/Stock Options

Joblaze summary

The Engineering Manager for Machine Learning at Discord leads the Safety ML team, focusing on developing and maintaining systems that protect users from harm through advanced detection models. This role requires a strong background in machine learning, particularly in areas like abuse detection and content classification, along with proven management experience. Ideal candidates are seasoned leaders who thrive in dynamic environments and are passionate about mentoring engineers while remaining hands-on with technical challenges. Discord's commitment to user safety underscores the importance of this role in shaping a secure community.

Joblaze insights

  • Listed about a month ago — first seen on Joblaze August 21, 2026. Last confirmed on Discord's careers page October 7, 2026.
  • Salary band is above the typical range for AI/ML roles (median ~$190,000).
  • Starts above 91% of 68 comparable lead ai/ml roles we track (median $194,000 across 40 companies).
  • Machine Learning appears in 14.8% of 203 comparable lead ai/ml roles; Data Science appears in 0.5% of 203 comparable lead ai/ml roles.

Quick facts

What's the salary range?
Discord lists $272,000–$306,000 for this role.
How much experience is required?
At least 5 years of relevant experience for this Engineering Manager, Machine Learning (Safety) role.
What's the tech stack?
Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: Data Science, Machine Learning.
What seniority level is this role?
Discord targets lead candidates for this position.
Is this full-time or contract?
Full-time for this Engineering Manager, Machine Learning (Safety) role at Discord.

From the original posting

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 US base salary range for this full-time position is $272,000 to $340,000 + 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.

Why Discord?

Standard company text repeated across Discord's postings is omitted here.

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