Principal Software Engineer - Creator Services Data

Roblox is building the tools and platform that empower a global community of developers to bring 3D immersive experiences to life for tens of millions of daily active users.

As a Principal Software Engineer on Creator Services Data, you will lead the company’s efforts to build and scale the next-generation data storage and cloud infrastructure that powers millions of experiences across Roblox. Your team owns mission-critical cloud services—including Data Stores, Memory Stores, and Badges—which store core game state (inventories, scores, leaderboards, trading) and track player progress. Additionally, your scope spans creator-facing observability dashboards (Client/Server Performance analytics) and the Roblox Extended Services platform, enabling top-tier experiences to purchase additional compute, storage, and generative AI resources.

Key Responsibilities

• Distributed Storage Architecture: Lead the architectural vision and hands-on implementation of high-availability, zero-data-loss cloud storage systems (key/value, relational, blob, and memory stores).
• Roblox Extended Services: Expand and onboard new experience developers to the Roblox Extended Services platform, delivering premium cloud compute, storage, and generative AI capabilities.
• Creator Observability & Telemetry: Build internal and creator-facing telemetry pipelines, intelligent analytics tools, metrics collection engines, and visualization dashboards for live game performance.
• On-Call & Production Reliability: Participate in on-call rotations for core data products, responding to high-severity incidents to enforce a 100% data durability and 99.99%+ uptime standard.
• Technical Mentorship & Governance: Mentor junior and mid-level software engineers through code reviews, 1:1s, joint projects, and architectural guidance across complex multi-system initiatives.
• Cross-Functional Company Leadership: Collaborate deeply with Product Management, Developer Relations, UX Design, Documentation, Customer Support, and partner engineering organizations.

Requirements

Architectural Mastery & Experience

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience building distributed microservices and cloud architectures (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• 3+ years of direct experience building, scaling, and maintaining (not just consuming) production data storage systems (relational databases, key/value stores, memory/blob stores).
• 10+ years of experience designing, testing, and deploying production-grade, well-documented code.

Language & Leadership Competencies

• 6+ years of hands-on experience programming in C++ and/or C# (ideally both).
• 6+ years of experience in fast-paced, high-impact agile software teams.
• 4+ years of experience leading and mentoring junior engineers, new graduates, and cross-functional project pods.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building big data pipelines or batch/stream processing engines (Apache Spark, Flink, Hadoop, MapReduce).
• Background in game engine/scripting development, specifically with Lua or Luau.
• Experience in data science, analytics, machine learning, or generative AI infrastructure.
• Prior experience building graphical user interfaces, developer dashboards, or web application frontends.

Total Rewards & Workplace Benefits

• Compensation: Base salary of $345,040 – $399,420 USD + comprehensive long-term equity grant package.
• Healthcare & Wellness: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage options; mental health resources and wellness stipends.
• Financial Security: 401(k) program with company matching; life and disability insurance.
• Time Off & Work Culture: Generous PTO policies, observed holidays, and hybrid workplace flexibility.