Principal Software Engineer - Content Understanding

Every day, tens of millions of people come to Roblox to explore, create, play, learn, and connect with friends in 3D immersive digital experiences– all created by our global community of developers and creators. 

At Roblox, we’re building the tools and platform that empower our community to bring any experience that they can imagine to life. Our vision is to reimagine the way people come together, from anywhere in the world, and on any device. We’re on a mission to connect a billion people with optimism and civility, and looking for amazing talent to help us get there. 

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.

As a Principal Software Engineer within the Creator Organization, you will develop innovative full-stack solutions that define the future of Roblox’s Content Understanding Platform. This platform processes billions of pieces of content—spanning 3D models, audio files, text, video, and entire experiences—extracting structured information about their meaning, context, and relationships. The Content Understanding Team develops cutting-edge AI models, advanced computer vision systems, and highly scalable backend platforms to power search, discovery, and moderation across Roblox. Your contributions will enable seamless asset discovery, automate moderation at scale, and drive transformative generative AI tools that reshape how millions of creators and users engage with Roblox.

You Will:

• Solve full-stack challenges to improve how AI, creators, and users describe and get along with content, including images, 3D models, audio, text, and video.
• Craft and build scalable pipelines for training, evaluating, and deploying machine learning models to support content annotation and discovery.
• Develop robust backend systems to power real-time search, discovery, and powerful generative AI features.
• Blend innovation with practicality, applying the latest AI research to build impactful, production-ready solutions.
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, and multi-functional teams to deliver bold technical projects.

You Have:

• 9+ years of strong programming skills in at least two languages (Python, C#, C++, Java) and a willingness to learn others as needed.
• Exposure to front end technologies and frameworks such as React or Angular.
• Practical experience crafting and scaling backend systems in cloud environments.
• Confirmed expertise across the stack, including backend development to deploying ML models in production environments.
• Familiarity with image or 3D object understanding, ideally within gaming or content creation industries.
• A “get stuff done” mentality with a readiness to solve challenges and take on tasks beyond your comfort zone to get results.
• A great foundation in computer vision, AI, or related fields.

You Are

• Experience with large-scale search systems, generative AI, or semantic content understanding.
• Experience with modern deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow) and end-to-end ML workflows.
• Knowledge of 3D geometry or asset workflows.
• Passion for empowering creators through innovative technology.

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.

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

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.

For US based roles only, please note the Company may not be able to employ candidates for this role who have United States work authorization related to certain U.S. visa categories, or support future H-1B sponsorship at this time.