Principal Data Scientist - Safety

Roblox; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 274,000 - 374,000; Full time

Job summary

Roblox is seeking a senior data scientist to advance safety, analytics, and platform insights across a global community. You will design experiments, build ground truth datasets, and measure the impact of moderation and content safety initiatives.

The role collaborates with product, engineering, policy, and legal to define robust measurement systems, apply causal inference, and scale detection pipelines. Requires 10+ years in data science or ML, strong Python/R and SQL skills, and advanced

Qualifications

• 10+ years of industry experience in data science, economics, analytics, or machine learning engineering.
• 7+ years of experience using scripting languages (Python, R) and big data tools such as SQL, Hive, Spark, and Airflow.

Responsibilities

• Establish and monitor prevalence measurement methodologies to quantify harmful content and behavior.
• Develop and validate ground truth datasets for harmful UGC and violative behaviors.
• Analyze threat landscapes and provide data-backed recommendations for resource investment.
• Design, implement, and analyze experiments for moderation and safety features.
• Apply causal inference to measure effectiveness and systemic impacts of safety initiatives.
• Communicate insights to leadership and cross-functional partners with clear, actionable recommendations.
• Collaborate with ML and Data Engineering to ensure sound measurement frameworks.

Skills

Data science

Economics

Analytics

ML engineering

Education

Advanced degree in quantitative field

Tools

Python

R

SQL

Hive

Spark

Airflow

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.

WHY DATA SCIENCE & ANALYTICS?

The Data Science & Analytics organization's mission is to increase our speed, frequency and acumen of making decisions at scale by instilling a data-influenced approach to building products. We cover a wide area of the data spectrum including analytical data engineering, product analytics, experimentation, causal inference, statistical modeling and machine learning. Aligned and partnering with product verticals, we use this extensive tool belt to discover new opportunities and unmet use cases, influence and shape the product roadmap and prioritization, build data products and measure impact on our community of players and developers.

WHY CONTENT SAFETY?

Content safety and moderation are paramount to maintaining a positive, engaging, and trustworthy platform experience for our global community. In this role, you will apply your expertise in data science, statistics, and causal inference to strategically define, measure, and improve the detection and mitigation of harmful user-generated content and violative on‑platform behaviors. Your focus will be on asset‑based content across the platform - including games, avatars, and emerging in‑game behaviors - by establishing reliable ground truth datasets and developing robust prevalence measurement methodologies. You will collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, Legal, Policy, and Compliance teams, acting as the quantitative expert who guides our defensive strategy against evolving safety threats and ensures accountability and scalable solutions. This is a critical opportunity to build innovative detection systems, define what we measure, and prove the impact of our safety efforts.

You Will

• Establish and monitor robust prevalence measurement methodologies to accurately quantify the overall level of harmful content and behavior on the platform, providing the authoritative source of truth for organizational safety goals.
• Develop and validate comprehensive ground truth datasets for harmful UGC and violative on‑platform behaviors, ensuring high quality and alignment with the latest platform policies.
• Deepen our understanding of violations by conducting exploratory analysis on current and emerging threat landscapes, providing data‑backed recommendations on where Product and Engineering should strategically invest detection and moderation resources.
• Design, implement, and analyze sophisticated experiments for new moderation and safety enforcement features, communicating results to our primary partners in Product and Engineering to guide development, while also collaborating closely with Policy, Compliance, and Legal teams for full strategic alignment.
• Leverage advanced causal inference methodologies to accurately measure the effectiveness and potential systemic impacts of various safety initiatives on player experience and platform integrity.
• Communicate strategic insights and present recommendations to leadership and all cross‑functional partners, translating complex statistical findings on prevalence, ground truth quality, and effectiveness into actionable strategies for Product, Engineering, Policy, Compliance, and Legal
• Partner with ML and Data Engineering teams to ensure model development, reporting, and detection systems are built on statistically sound ground truth and measurement frameworks.

You Have

• 10+ years of industry experience in data science, economics, analytics, or machine learning engineering
• 7+ years of experience using scripting languages (Python, R), and big data query/processing languages and tools such as SQL, Hive, Spark, and Airflow
• Knowledge of ML and Deep Learning either via formal training or industry experience
• Ability to apply creative first‑principles reasoning to solve ambiguous problems
• Experience developing large‑scale safety or moderation systems as well as experience with content platforms, specifically user‑generated content
• Advanced Degree and/or PhD in Statistics, Computer Science, Physics, Applied Math, Economics, or other related quantitative fields

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

$274,000—$373,680 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.