Roblox Principal Software Engineer at Roblox leads the Safety Foundation team, setting technical direction and driving execution. This role focuses on scaling safety infrastructure to handle 10x more traffic with AI-first workflows.
Responsibilities
Serve as the hands-on tech lead for a group of engineers on the Safety Foundation team — setting technical direction, driving execution, and staying close to the code
Lead the design and implementation of a scalable, cost-efficient platform engineered for 10x traffic growth
Drive the AI-first transformation of the safety platform: architecting agentic and ML-integrated workflows with the security, auditability, and reliability that production safety systems require
Build the developer experience layer that enables product teams across Roblox to integrate safety capabilities in hours, not months
Partner closely with Trust & Safety ML, User Safety, Safety Operations, and product teams to translate platform needs into durable infrastructure
Define backend standards and patterns across the team; raise the technical bar through code review, architecture guidance, and mentorship
Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks across networking, data, and compute — at scale
Qualification
4+ years acting as a tech leadBA/BS in Computer ScienceA hands-on technical leaderA platform thinkerComfortable with ambiguityA team-player & multiplierAnnual Salary Range
Required
10+ years of experience building large-scale backend/distributed systems and shipping high-quality systems to production. Strong preference for candidates who have experience with building developer platforms.
4+ years acting as a tech lead: setting direction, driving execution, and growing engineers at multiple levels
Deep proficiency in Go or a similar compiled language (Go strongly preferred). Experience with CQRS & Event Sourcing is a plus
Experience with NoSQL databases at scale (DynamoDB, Cassandra, or similar)
Experience with or strong interest in AI/ML platform integration — pipelines, agentic workflows, HITL workflows or similar
BA/BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field — or equivalent experience
A hands-on technical leader. You can zoom out to own the architecture and zoom in to write the hard code. You don't choose between leading and building — you do both.
A platform thinker. You design for reuse, velocity, and reliability. You understand that your customers are other engineering teams, and you build with them in mind.
Comfortable with ambiguity. You thrive on open-ended, gnarly problems. You can break them down, build alignment, and drive them to resolution — without waiting for perfect requirements.
A team-player & multiplier. You are collaborative & strive to make everyone around you better — through rigorous code & architecture reviews, clear technical communication, and a genuine investment in the growth of the people you work with.
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.
