Principal Software Engineer - Compute (Kubernetes)

A career at Roblox means you’ll be working to shape the future of human interaction, solving unique technical challenges at scale, and helping to create safer, more civil shared experiences for everyone. We are seeking a visionary Principal Software Engineer to join our Compute organization and provide technical leadership for our Kubernetes infrastructure.

Architectural Leadership

Serve as a technical lead for our Kubernetes ecosystem, setting the long-term architectural strategy for a platform that manages thousands of nodes and supports millions of concurrent requests.

Customer Focus

Think deeply about how our internal customers consume and interact with compute, designing intuitive interfaces and tooling that simplify consumption of complex infrastructure services.

Deep-Dive Engineering

Leverage deep expertise in Kubernetes internals, including custom controllers, operators, API server architecture, and etcd, to solve complex scaling bottlenecks and optimize our control plane.

Secure Multi-tenancy

Architect robust security, isolation, and identity solutions that allow diverse workloads to safely coexist at scale.

Operational Excellence

Lead the design of advanced automation, observability, and self-healing systems that minimize MTTR and maintain world-class uptime for our global compute fleet.

Strategic Influence

Partner with engineering leadership to define the technical roadmap, balancing feature velocity against platform integrity.

Mentorship

Foster a culture of technical excellence across the Compute organization through rigorous architectural reviews, code standards, and the active mentorship of senior and staff-level engineers.

Experience

• 10+ years of experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems, platform engineering, or cloud infrastructure.
• Demonstrated expertise in Kubernetes internals, with a track record of modifying or extending the Kubernetes ecosystem (custom controllers, operators, upstream contributions).
• Production Scale: A history of building and operating mission-critical infrastructure platforms that serve thousands of nodes or high-throughput, low-latency microservices.
• Deep understanding of cloud-native security practices, identity solutions, and container networking.
• Proven track record as a technical anchor, with the ability to communicate complex concepts, influence cross-functional stakeholders, and lead initiatives across multiple teams.

Location

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.
• Anual Salary Range $345,040—$399,420 USD

Roles

• Based in an office are onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with optional presence on Monday and Friday (unless otherwise noted).

EEO Statement

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.