Principal Software Engineer (Compute Fleet Management)

TL;DR

Principal Software Engineer (Compute Fleet Management): Lead the technical direction for Roblox’s compute fleet management layer across provisioning, data plane, control planes, and internal self-serve capacity products with an accent on Kubernetes-style declarative control planes, fleet-wide automation contracts, and maintaining compute supply/demand balance at scale. Focus on designing reliable, secure fleet operations for on-prem and cloud Kubernetes clusters while writing code daily on the hardest systems and implementation problems.

Company

Roblox builds tools and a platform that help its community create and run 3D immersive digital experiences.

What you will do

• Serve as overall technical lead for three Fleet Management pods, aligning technical direction across provisioning, data plane, and control plane surfaces.
• Architect declarative, Kubernetes-style control planes for operating the compute fleet across on-prem and cloud, including reconciliation and scalable exposure of capacity.
• Own internal customer contracts and APIs that govern automation across the fleet so infrastructure teams can operate capacity safely and predictably.
• Drive self-serve capacity strategy via internal-facing products and UIs for requesting, managing, and reasoning about compute.
• Centralize and raise the bar on security, maintenance operations, and uptime for all Roblox Kubernetes clusters, ensuring fleet-wide changes ship reliably.
• Write code daily and partner with stakeholders to understand compute needs and drive innovation for backend services, AI, and edge computing.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems and infrastructure.
• Proven technical leadership as an organization’s technical anchor across multiple teams, with ability to set direction and raise engineering standards.
• Strong proficiency in Go and deep experience designing/operating production services at fleet scale.
• Hands-on experience building declarative, Kubernetes-style control planes and reconciliation patterns.
• Strong proficiency with gRPC for service-to-service APIs and with SQL/Postgres for durable, high-scale state.
• Experience operating compute capacity across both on-prem data centers and cloud providers at the scale of hundreds of thousands of instances.

Culture & Benefits

• Onsite schedule for headquarters-based roles: onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with optional presence on Monday and Friday.
• Full-time employees are eligible for equity compensation and benefits.
• Focus on solving unique technical challenges at scale and building safer, more civil shared experiences.
• Equal employment opportunity and reasonable accommodations during the recruiting process.

Hiring process

• Interviews and evaluations focused on technical leadership, systems design, and hands-on engineering depth.
• Additional checks for US-based roles regarding work authorization and potential H-1B sponsorship constraints.

Location: San Mateo, CA (onsite Tuesday–Thursday; optional Monday/Friday)