Distinguished Engineer, Machine Learning - Discovery

Roblox; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 419,000 - 458,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Job summary

Roblox is seeking a Distinguished Engineer/Technical Director for Discovery in San Mateo, CA to own the technical vision of machine learning across search and discovery. You will guide candidate generation, ranking, and AI workflows, while shaping infrastructure for training and serving at scale.

You will partner with modelers, data and AI infra engineers, and product teams to push the boundaries of large-scale training and serving, mentoring engineers and advancing Roblox’s technical excellence.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience delivering and improving large-scale search and recommendation systems.
• Experience crafting and building large-scale ML models with billions of parameters and launching them into production.
• Ability to break down long-term product requirements into iterative deliverables.
• Initiated and facilitated challenging technical decisions across multiple teams and organizations.
• Deep technical expertise focused on user needs for Roblox users and internal engineers.
• Generalist approach with mastery of several languages and technologies.
• Ability to tackle data or ML problems hands-on when needed.
• BS in Computer Science or a related discipline; MS/PhD is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical direction and implementation for ML solutions powering search and recommendations.
• Author specs for new features and improvements; set AI strategy and drive business outcomes.
• Build and evolve infrastructure for training, serving, and evaluating ML models, including Generative AI.
• Co-design models and systems with modelers, data engineers, and product teams to push large-scale training and serving.
• Lead engineers by example and establish an engineering culture of excellence.

Education

BS in Computer Science

MS/PhD (a definite plus)

Job description

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 Distinguished Engineer/Technical Director on Discovery, you’ll be in charge of the overall technical vision and execution for all machine learning initiatives across search and discovery teams. The mission of these teams is to connect a billion users with the best connections and content at the right time, covering a very diverse range of search and recommendation problems at a high scale. This is fundamental to how we personalize the experience to drive engagement and retention for Roblox users. With daily active users growing at a record rate, we are looking for expert tech leaders who are passionate about crafting and building machine learning solutions to power Search and Recommendations.

You Will:

• Own the technical direction and implementation for the machine learning solutions that power the search and recommendation systems, driving Roblox content distribution.
• Author specs for new features and improvements. You would be responsible for setting the AI strategy, pushing the frontier of recommendation technology, and driving business outcomes across candidate generation, ranking, objective functions, and value delivery for both users and developers.
• Build and evolve infrastructure for training, serving, and evaluating both traditional ML models and Generative AI models (e.g., embedding-based retrieval, transformers, LLM-based workflows)
• You will co-design models and systems, working at the intersection of model architecture and infrastructure, partnering closely with core modelers, data and AI infrastructure engineers, and product teams to push the boundaries of large-scale training and serving.
• Lead other engineers by example and through technical direction as an individual contributor and create an engineering culture of excellence
• Become an authority on our technology stack and make sure we always build new solutions the right way
• Collaborate with other teams within Roblox to make sure we are building products with community and company first attitude.
• Balance researching new technologies with a practical approach to realize the research efforts into the Roblox products
• Collaborate with the industry and communities where applicable and be ambassador for Roblox.

You Have:

• 10+ years of experience and a consistent record of delivering and improving large-scale search and recommendation systems.
• Experience crafting and building large scale machine learning models with billions of parameters and launching them into production.
• The capability of breaking down long-term product requirements into iterative deliverable stages.
• Initiated and facilitated challenging technical decisions across multiple teams and organizations. You are empathetic and find common understanding.
• Deep technical expertise, you always start with the needs of the user, whether they are Roblox users or internal engineers.
• A generalist approach and you have mastered several languages and technologies already; you can easily adapt to any situation.
• The ability to roll up your sleeves to tackle data problems or machine learning problems when they come up.
• A creative and strategic approach to solving hard problems. You simplify the complex. You bring in fresh ideas from new places.
• BS in Computer Science or a related discipline, MS/PhD are a definite plus.

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.

Annual Salary Range

$419,390 — $457,970 USD

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.