Principal Software Engineer (Languages & Compilers)

Location: San Mateo, CA, United States. Office-based roles are onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with optional presence on Monday and Friday.

Annual base salary: $295,250–$345,040 USD. Full-time employees are also eligible for equity compensation and benefits.

Company

Roblox builds a platform and development tools for 3D immersive digital experiences created by a global community of developers and creators.

What you will do

• Design and develop programming models that improve script performance and scalability.
• Prototype language and tooling designs against realistic use cases and validate performance and functionality.
• Own feature development from concept and prototyping through deployment and maintenance.
• Improve the adaptability and performance of existing engine components.
• Collaborate with engineers across engine and partner teams on shared solutions.

Requirements

• Over 10 years of experience developing and deploying user-facing software products.
• A minimum of a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science.
• Proficiency in C++ and understanding of parallel and concurrent programming concepts.
• Understanding of industry standards and design patterns.
• Ability to analyze problems from multiple perspectives and evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of different solutions.
• Ability to navigate complex codebases with minimal guidance and develop resilient, maintainable systems.
• Interest in programming environments and scripting languages, with continuous learning about current trends.

Nice to have

• Experience with API and tool development, game development, distributed systems, and Lua/Luau programming.

Culture & Benefits

• Work on programming interfaces, script libraries, development tools, and a multithreaded runtime used by millions of developers.
• Full-time employment includes equity compensation and benefits.
• Roblox provides equal employment opportunities and reasonable accommodations during the recruiting process.
• For US-based roles, the company may be unable to employ candidates whose work authorization involves certain US visa categories and may not support future H-1B sponsorship.