Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Content Safety

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

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Benefits

Job summary

Roblox is seeking a Principal Machine Learning Engineer for Content Safety to define the 3-5 year technical strategy for ML-driven content moderation at massive scale. You will own architecture, lead cross-functional teams, and ship production-ready solutions that protect users while preserving platform civility.

You will blend technical leadership with pragmatic execution, balancing user safety with platform goals and helping Roblox scale safe experiences for hundreds of millions of daily users.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience designing, developing, and operating large-scale ML systems in a production environment.
• Proven track record of setting long-term technical direction for an ML domain with impact.
• Deep expertise in ML architectures including CV and/or Vision-Language Models (VLMs).
• Expertise in architecting scalable, real-time ML inference services and robust data pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Define and Own the Technical Vision: lead multi-year ML strategy, architecture, and execution for Content Safety.
• Strategic Stakeholder Partnership: collaborate with executive-level leaders to define and prioritize ML roadmap affecting product strategy and safety outcomes.
• Lead Innovation: oversee adoption of techniques such as transfer learning, self-supervised learning, quantization, LoRA, distillation.
• Drive End-to-End Product Development: build datasets from scratch, create auto-labeling pipelines, and ship solutions.
• Ship Code, Not Just Models: spend 30-40% on backend/integration, deploy in production stack, use modern AI coding tools to accelerate velocity.

Skills

Large-scale ML systems

Technical direction for ML domain

CV/VLMs

Real-time inference pipelines

Cross-functional leadership

Executive communication

Tools

Cursor

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 Content Safety?

As a Principal Machine Learning Engineer for Content Safety, you will define the future of proactive moderation, driving immense social impact through cutting-edge, innovative ML solutions, focused on critical and ambiguous safety challenges.

You will set the 3-5 year technical strategy and architectural blueprint for how Roblox uses machine learning for content moderation. You will own the architectural and execution roadmap of massive-scale ML systems that mitigate violative UGC content before it impacts our community.

You will feel a deep sense of responsibility in proactively protecting our community thoughtfully and fairly, while balancing user freedom with platform civility. Your efforts will ensure Roblox remains one of the safest places on the internet for our broad community of over 100 million daily active users.

You will:

• Define and Own the Technical Vision: Define and lead the multi-year technical vision, architectural strategy, and execution for machine learning solutions in Content Safety, ensuring these systems proactively and effectively detect and mitigate violative content at massive scale.

• Strategic Stakeholder Partnership: Collaborate with executive-level Product, Data Science, Policy, and Operations leaders to define and prioritize the strategic machine learning roadmap, influencing product strategy and demonstrating the impact of ML on user trust and safety outcomes.

• Lead Innovation: Oversee the adoption and safe deployment of innovative machine learning techniques (e.g., transfer-learning, self-supervised learning, quantization, LoRA, distillation).

• Drive End-to-End Product Development: You will not just model; you will build. You will work cross-functionally to construct datasets from scratch where none exist, build auto-labeling pipelines, and ship solutions to solve novel technical problems.

• Ship Code, Not Just Models: Expect to spend roughly 30-40% of your time on backend and integration work. You will be responsible for integrating your work into the production stack, leveraging modern AI coding tools (e.g., Cursor) to accelerate velocity and handle infrastructure complexity

You have:

• 8+ years of experience designing, developing, and operating large-scale, high-impact machine learning systems in a production environment.

• A proven track record of successfully setting the long-term technical direction for an entire ML domain, demonstrating the ability to take ambiguous problems from concept to scaled production impact.

• Deep expertise in advanced ML architectures and techniques, including Computer Vision (CV) and/or Vision-Language Models (VLMs)

• Expertise in architecting scalable, real-time ML inference services and robust data pipelines

• Demonstrated success in leading and resolving high-stakes, cross-functional conflicts and technical disagreements, with an ability to build consensus among diverse stakeholders.

• Exceptional product sense and strategic planning ability: able to translate platform safety requirements into an achievable, iterative technical roadmap.

You are:

• A Visionary Architect: Capable of synthesizing complex business and safety goals into a clear, compelling, and actionable technical strategy.

• A Pragmatic Builder: You are scrappy and impact-oriented. You view undefined data and messy systems as opportunities to build structure rather than blockers to progress.

• Comfortable with Ambiguity: You thrive in undefined or open-ended problem spaces, providing structure, clarity, and decisive direction to your teams.

• An Inspiring Leader: Passionate about developing the next generation of technical leaders, managers, and engineers.

• An Executive Communicator: Highly effective at communicating complex technical concepts to both engineering teams and non-technical executive leadership.

• Committed to Ethical AI: Dedicated to building ML systems that are fair, transparent, and operate with the utmost responsibility toward user safety and platform civility.

Annual Salary Range

$295,250—$345,040 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.

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).