Principal Database Engineer - Scalable Roblox Platform

OneClick Smart Resume; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 294,000 - 343,000; Full time

Job summary

Roblox in San Mateo, CA is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Roblox Database. You will shape the architecture, build and launch critical database capabilities that underpin our global services, reporting to the Technical Director for Storage.

You will design engine features, optimize latency and scale, ensure high availability across regions, and mentor engineers while collaborating with OSS communities around PostgreSQL and RocksDB ecosystems.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience.
• Experience with large-scale distributed databases or storage engines.
• Expertise in database internals and C/C++, Go or Rust.
• Experience with Raft or Paxos and multi-region replication.
• Experience shipping high-QPS, low-latency services on Kubernetes/Nomad with observability.
• Ability to turn product requirements into a technical roadmap.
• Bonus: OSS contributions to PostgreSQL/RocksDB.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement engine features—indexing, storage formats, WAL and replication.
• Evolve the control plane for elastic scaling, autonomous healing, and zero-downtime moves across regions.
• Profile and optimize critical code paths with tracing and performance tooling.
• Lead design reviews, benchmarks, failure drills, and post-incident retrospectives.
• Automate testing, CI/CD, rollout safety, observability, and autoscaling.
• Mentor engineers and share database craftsmanship across teams.
• Engage with open-source communities—upstreaming patches and sharing learnings.

Skills

Distributed databases

Database internals

C/C++, Go or Rust

Raft/Paxos

Kubernetes/Nomad

Observability

Mentoring

Tools

PostgreSQL

RocksDB

PostgreSQL ecosystem

Kubernetes

Job description

Roblox in San Mateo, CA is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Roblox Database. You will shape the architecture, build and launch critical database capabilities that underpin our global services, reporting to the Technical Director for Storage.

You will design engine features, optimize latency and scale, ensure high availability across regions, and mentor engineers while collaborating with OSS communities around PostgreSQL and RocksDB ecosystems.