Principal Data Infrastructure Architect (Exabyte Scale)

Roblox; California (MO); On-site; USD 295,000 - 345,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Comprehensive benefits

Onsite in San Mateo

Job summary

Roblox is seeking a Principal Software Engineer in Data Infra to own the multi-year architectural strategy for Roblox's core data platforms (Kafka, Flink, Spark, Trino, Druid, Airflow, Data Catalog). You will lead cross-functional teams with executives, data science, and product engineering to align roadmaps with business metrics and ensure scalable, robust infrastructure.

You will drive deep performance optimizations, advanced memory and serialization techniques, and establish engineering

Qualifications

• 8+ years building production-grade distributed systems.
• Deep experience with Kafka, Flink, Spark, Trino, Druid, Hive, Airflow.
• Strong backend programming skills in Java/Go/Scala and cloud/Kubernetes in AWS or GCP.

Responsibilities

• Define Multi-Year Technical Strategy: own end-to-end architectural vision for core data platforms.
• Lead Cross-Functional Alignment with executives, governance, data science, and product engineering.
• Optimize Performance Engine Internals: improve query planning, state management, and memory use for throughput and cost-efficiency.
• Pioneer Autonomous Agentic Interfaces: integrate AI/ML and LLMs for self-serve data discovery and metadata generation.
• Cultivate Engineering Excellence: set code quality standards, conduct post-incident analyses, and promote chaos testing.

Skills

Distributed systems

Java/Go/Scala

Kubernetes

Leadership

Architecture design

Data platforms

Education

B.S. in CS or equivalent

Tools

Kafka

Flink

Spark

Trino

Druid

Hive

Airflow

Data Catalog

Job description

Roblox is seeking a Principal Software Engineer in Data Infra to own the multi-year architectural strategy for Roblox's core data platforms (Kafka, Flink, Spark, Trino, Druid, Airflow, Data Catalog). You will lead cross-functional teams with executives, data science, and product engineering to align roadmaps with business metrics and ensure scalable, robust infrastructure.

You will drive deep performance optimizations, advanced memory and serialization techniques, and establish engineering