Discord is opening its first dedicated engineering hub outside its San Francisco headquarters, and it’s starting from scratch in Lisbon. The first person through the door will be the Site Lead Lisbon: employee number one on the ground, in charge of standing up the site and hiring the founding team.
What Discord plans to build
The Lisbon office will host Core Tech teams working on infrastructure, audio and video, performance and security. The plan is to hire 30 engineers by the end of 2027. Besides the site lead, Discord is looking for a founding recruiter. The working day includes a daily overlap with the US team in the late afternoon, Lisbon time.
Discord insists this isn’t meant to be a satellite office. The goal is a site with real technical ownership and a direct line into how the company builds technology, with a Lisbon identity of its own. For anyone scanning software development jobs in Portugal, it’s an unusual chance to join at the very start.
A hands-on director of engineering role
This director of engineering role isn’t a pure management post.
The person will:
- own the site end to end, from hiring plans to operational readiness
- build the local hiring plan with central Recruiting
- set architecture direction and review design docs
- act as Lisbon’s people leader, covering culture, onboarding and local HR matters
- work with US engineering leadership on team charters that fit across time zones
- flag structural risks early, such as notice periods and local employment law, together with Legal
Who Discord wants
Among engineering leadership jobs in Portugal, this one asks for a lot. The profile includes a record of building or scaling an engineering site from zero, 5+ years as a software engineer with strong backend and distributed systems skills, and 5+ years as a manager. Managing managers for two years or more is a bonus. Candidates should be comfortable with high autonomy in the first 6 to 12 months, before local HR, recruiting and finance are fully staffed.
The stack and the daily reality
Backend work uses Rust and Python, with React, React Native and C++ or Rust on clients. The leader also acts as Discord’s face in the local ecosystem: universities, meetups and technology events such as Web Summit. English is required, Portuguese strongly preferred, and the role means being in the Lisbon office three to four days a week, with relocation to the area if needed.
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