Discord is used by over 200 million people every month for many different reasons, but there’s one thing that nearly everyone does on our platform:** play video games.** Over 90% of our users play games, spending a combined 1.5 billion hours playing thousands of unique titles on Discord each month. Discord plays a uniquely important role in the future of gaming. We are focused on making it easier and more fun for people to talk and hang out before, during, and after playing games.
Note: This position is based in our San Francisco office
Discord's IT function is at an inflection point. We have a strong support team, and now we need a leader who can build an engineering discipline on top of it. This role reports to the Head of Security & IT and owns the full IT surface: identity and access, endpoint and device trust, SaaS governance, workplace infrastructure, and internal tooling. Your mandate is to transform how IT operates — a fundamental shift from reactive support into a team that writes code, ships automation, and builds the platforms that a top-tier engineering company deserves.
This is a building role, not a maintenance role. You'll inherit a functioning support operation and a set of tools that work, but the engineering layer doesn't exist yet. You're here to create it, build the muscle to automate, integrate, and ship to help Discord scale. You should be just as comfortable architecting an identity platform as you are debugging a network issue or writing a Terraform module.
You also own the IT side of the security boundary: identity and access management, endpoint protection, device trust, and the compliance controls that live within IT. Dedicated Security Engineering owns the deeper security stack. You partner closely with them on Zero Trust architecture and incident response, and you manage that boundary with maturity and clarity.
What You'll Be Doing
- Build engineering capability where there is none today, stand up infrastructure-as-code practices, and shift the team's center of gravity from ticket resolution to platform engineering and automation
- Own identity and access management end-to-end. Progress our Zero Trust strategy across identity, device trust, and network layers, and drive the technical roadmap for how Discord employees authenticate, authorize, and access resources
- Drive SaaS governance as a technical discipline: license management, shadow IT discovery, cost optimization, and vendor consolidation
- Modernize service delivery. Integrate AI into workflows, build self-service capabilities, and manage to meaningful SLAs that continuously improve resolution time and employee satisfaction across a globally distributed, hybrid workforce
- Own workplace infrastructure: office networking, AV systems, and endpoint readiness for our San Francisco headquarters, future offices, and hybrid workforce
- Manage the IT budget like a product org. Prioritize ruthlessly, make disciplined build-vs-buy decisions, reduce vendor redundancy, and quantify the value your team delivers
- Administer and continuously improve core IT-managed systems (e.g., Okta, Google Workspace, Jamf, Intune, Crowdstrike, 1Password/Kolide, Asana, Zendesk).
What you should have
- 10+ years of progressive IT experience with a strong background in endpoint management, SaaS/identity platform administration, and systems engineering.
- 7+ years of experience building and managing multiple teams.
- You've built or transformed an IT organization at a technology company. You took a support-oriented function and turned it into a team that ships code, builds platforms, and operates with engineering discipline.
- You're a technical leader who still builds. You've personally written automation, designed identity architectures, or built internal tooling. You think in infrastructure-as-code, not click-ops, and you're credible with the engineers on your team and across the company
- You've owned the IT side of the security boundary: endpoint management, identity, device trust, and compliance controls. You know where IT ends and dedicated security engineering begins, and you've navigated that line collaboratively
- You've managed modern IT platforms at scale. Identity, endpoint management, EDR, productivity suites, and ticketing systems, operated as integrated systems through automation rather than standalone tools managed through consoles
- You manage multimillion-dollar budgets and make strategic trade-offs. Vendor consolidation, cost optimization, and the judgment to know when to build versus when to buy
- You've personally stood up capabilities from scratch, whether internal tooling, automation pipelines, or new team functions, and you thrive in the ambiguity of "we don't have this yet"
Bonus Points
- Experience at a company with a similar profile to Discord: consumer tech, high-growth, highly technical employee base, strong product culture
- Background in leading IT through significant company milestones like enterprise readiness, M&A integration, or international expansion
- Track record of building internal tooling where commercial solutions weren't justified. You shipped code, not just purchased software
_ The US base salary range for this full-time position is $400,000 to $450,000 + 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? **
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. 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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