Roblox Principal Data Scientist role leading measurement, strategic, and algorithmic foundations for Economy Recommendation systems at Roblox. Own ranking initiatives powering key marketplace canvases.
Responsibilities
Set the Technical Direction: Lead the development of retrieval and ranking solutions that power the Economy recommendation engine and surfaces.
Measure Long-Term Impact: Build rigorous measurement and causal inference solutions to enable ranking models to optimize for long-term ecosystem health, creator growth, and platform economics rather than just short-term conversion.
Drive Strategy: Partner with product and engineering leaders as a primary scientific advocate, providing unbiased measurement and insights to accelerate innovation and strategic prioritization.
Prototype & Productize: Develop ranking prototypes to demonstrate what is possible, and partner closely with ML Engineering (MLE) to productize these solutions at scale.
Elevate the Team: Mentor and grow other data scientists on the team, create a culture of scientific excellence, and drive alignment on the long-term technical direction of the Economy space.
Qualification
Annual Salary Range$322For US based roles only
Required
8+ years of industry or research experience in Data Science, Economics, or ML Engineering, specifically within large-scale recommendation systems, pricing, or UGC content platforms.
Deep Methodological Expertise in quantitative methodologies, causal inference (observational and experimental), and modern data stack tools (Python, R, SQL, Hive, Spark, Airflow), along with a deep theoretical and practical understanding of Deep Learning.
Marketplace Intuition with a proven track record of working with large-scale transactional or platform data to analyze micro-level user behavior and isolate its impact on long-term outcomes and platform health.
Executive Communication & Leadership skills to distill high-dimensional problems into succinct, actionable narratives for non-technical executive audiences. You are a systems thinker and a deep collaborator who can initiate and facilitate challenging technical decisions across multiple teams.
An Advanced Degree (Master’s or PhD) in Economics, Econometrics, Quantitative Finance, Statistics, Operations Research, Physics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field.
For roles that are based at our headquarters in San Mateo, CA: The starting base pay for this position is as shown below. The actual base pay is dependent upon a variety of job-related factors such as professional background, training, work experience, location, business needs and market demand. Therefore, in some circumstances, the actual salary could fall outside of this expected range. This pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. All full-time employees are also eligible for equity compensation and for benefits as described on this page.
Annual Salary Range
$322,820—$373,680 USD
Roles that are based in an office are onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with optional presence on Monday and Friday (unless otherwise noted).
Roblox provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Roblox also provides reasonable accommodations to candidates with qualifying disabilities or religious beliefs during the recruiting process.
For US based roles only, please note the Company may not be able to employ candidates for this role who have United States work authorization related to certain U.S. visa categories, or support future H-1B sponsorship at this time.
