Principal Software Engineer, Game Safety

About the role

At Roblox, we’re building the tools and platform that empower our global community of developers and creators to bring any experience they can imagine to life. Our vision is to reimagine the way people come together, from anywhere in the world, and on any device. As a Principal Software Engineer on Game Safety, you’ll work on some of the most challenging problems we face, transforming our experience safety efforts into a scale-oriented, near-real-time problem in an adversarial context.

The Safety organization’s mission is to become the leader in civil immersive online communities by systematically detecting, removing, and preventing problematic accounts, content, and behavior, while ensuring Roblox accounts remain secure. You’ll cover a broad area of the tech spectrum, including machine learning, 3D model classifiers, experimentation, automation, detection workflows, and AI-powered text filters. Partnering with product teams, you’ll influence and shape the product roadmap, build safety products, and measure their impact on our community.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale distributed systems that power game moderation at Roblox, ensuring billions of monthly engagement hours are safe and civil.
• Operate as a high-agency problem solver: tackle challenges across backend services, ML pipelines, or data to ship impactful safety products.
• Develop innovative detection approaches in a rapidly evolving, adversarial landscape using a data-driven lens to identify new opportunities.
• Lead through technical excellence: define the team’s direction by diving into the hardest problems, earning influence through execution and mentorship.
• Partner cross-functionally with Moderation Operations, Product Management, and Data Science to deliver end-to-end products that protect our community.

Requirements

• 6+ years of experience building and shipping high-scale backend systems to production.
• 6+ years of experience working on multi-person codebases, including open-source or personal projects.
• Passion for delivering products end-to-end, from ideation through implementation, with a focus on user needs and cross-functional collaboration.
• Experience with machine learning is a plus.

Skills

• Resourceful: Adaptable in any situation and able to find a path forward.
• Analytical: Excited to investigate large, ambiguous problems and quantify solutions.
• User Oriented: Always start with the needs of the user, whether they are Roblox users or internal engineers.
• Team Oriented: Lift up peers, foster technical excellence, and mentor others.
• Mission Driven: Stay laser-focused on the mission, think long-term, and deliver short-term value strategically.

Pay

For roles based at our headquarters in San Mateo, CA, the starting base pay range is $295,250—$345,040 USD. The actual base pay depends on professional background, training, work experience, location, business needs, and market demand. Full-time employees are also eligible for equity compensation and benefits.

Schedule

Roles that are based in an office are onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with optional presence on Monday and Friday.