Principal Software Engineer (Distributed Systems)

TL;DR

Principal Software Engineer (Distributed Systems): Leading the design and development of next-generation data storage systems to power millions of experiences on the Roblox Platform with an accent on high-scale distributed systems and cloud services. Focus on building robust storage infrastructure, improving observability pipelines, and scaling the Roblox Extended Services platform.

Location: Must be based in San Mateo, CA (Hybrid: Onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday)

Company

A global platform empowering a community of developers to create immersive 3D digital experiences for millions of users.

What you will do

• Lead the design and development of cloud services and data storage systems for the Creator Community.
• Build state-of-the-art storage infrastructure, serving layers, clients, and web APIs.
• Expand observability capabilities through metrics collection, data pipelines, and analytics dashboards.
• Scale the Roblox Extended Services platform to support increased resource needs for large experiences.
• Mentor junior engineers through design reviews, 1:1s, and technical guidance.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with UX, product management, and other engineering teams.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in software development with public clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP), microservices, and distributed systems.
• 3+ years of experience building and maintaining data storage systems (relational, key/value, blob stores).
• 6+ years of programming experience in C# and/or C++.
• 4+ years experience leading junior engineers on complex software projects.
• 10+ years experience designing and deploying robust, scalable production-grade code.
• Must have United States work authorization (certain visa categories and H-1B sponsorship may not be supported).

Nice to have

• Experience building big data pipelines or batch processing systems (MapReduce, Hadoop, Flink, Spark).
• Programming experience in Lua/Luau for computer games.
• Knowledge of data science, machine learning, or AI.
• Experience building GUIs, dashboards, or web application front-ends.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work model with mandatory onsite presence Tue/Wed/Thu.
• Equity compensation and comprehensive benefits package for full-time employees.
• Commitment to 100% uptime and data durability for mission-critical services.
• Environment that values innovation, versatility, and team-oriented collaboration.