Manager, Scaled Abuse Countermeasures and Research

Join Discord as a Manager to lead the Scaled Abuse Countermeasures and Research team, focusing on automation and threat research to combat high-volume abuse on the platform. 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 exists to give people the power to create space to find belonging — to talk regularly with the people they care about and build genuine relationships with friends and communities close to home or around the world.

• •Lead and grow the SCAR team, a group of Scaled Abuse Scientists who serve as Discord's first line of defense against bulk fake account creation, login abuse, spam, scams, fraud, and other high-volume threats.
• •Set a vision for the team that leans heavily into automation — scale SCAR's impact by partnering with Safety ML on ML-driven detection and building AI-powered incident response workflows that increase the team's leverage and reduce manual work.
• •Define scaled abuse north-star metrics and build a roadmap and prioritization framework that keeps the team focused on the highest-impact problems.
• •Stand up a research program where the team operates as scientists: surface the most important questions about attacker operations and signals, then systematically answer them through structured research and experimentation.
• •Close the loop with Safety ML so that SCAR's signals feed directly into model features and pipeline upgrades, and tactical wins translate into long-term, automated countermeasures.
• •Partner cross-functionally with Product, Safety ML, Data Science, Policy, Legal, Trust & Safety, and Revenue, influencing safety-by-design decisions upstream so abuse is prevented, not just mitigated.
• •Coach, hire, and grow Scaled Abuse Scientists.
• •Communicate attacker dynamics, economic incentives, and trade-offs clearly to senior leadership.

• •The US base salary range for this full-time position is $220,000 to $275,000 + equity + benefits.
• •Relocation assistance may be available.
• •Discord is committed to inclusion and providing reasonable accommodations during the interview process.

• •2+ years of people management experience leading technical teams, including engineers, ML engineers, data scientists, or applied researchers, or an equivalent track record of leading, mentoring, or coordinating technical work in a way that has prepared you to step into this role.
• •4+ years of experience working on Trust & Safety, fraud, anti-abuse, or a closely adjacent adversarial domain at a consumer-scale platform.
• •Demonstrated ability to drive ML and automation adoption within a Trust & Safety or operations context.
• •Strong analytical skills and fluency in SQL and Python for data investigation and pattern analysis (not full software engineering proficiency required).
• •Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills, with a history of partnering effectively across engineering, ML, data science, policy, legal, and product teams.
• •A growth mindset: you seek feedback, reflect on decisions, and actively help your team do the same.