Principal Software Engineer, App Performance

Roblox Corporation; San Mateo (CA); Hybrid; USD 295,000 - 345,000; Full time

Job summary

Roblox Corporation in California is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for App Performance to lead stability and cross‑platform optimization of the Roblox consumer app. You will drive research and roadmaps to prevent crashes, reduce hangs, and improve responsiveness across mobile, desktop, and console devices, partnering with teams across Engineering, Product, and Design.

This role requires senior-level expertise with C++ and performance profiling, a systems mindset, and a track record of

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience with complex client applications.
• Ability to dive into unfamiliar codebases and drive projects to production.
• Hands-on performance profiling on mobile or desktop platforms.
• Builds reliable systems with measurement and monitoring.

Responsibilities

• Drive research of new opportunities and roadmaps to improve stability.
• Design solutions to prevent crashes, hangs, and interruptions.
• Build defense mechanisms for real-time monitoring, alerting, and CI/CD automation.
• Collaborate with Engineering, Product and Design on priorities and rollout plans.
• Deliver guardrails for performance across mobile, desktop, and console.

Skills

C++

Lua

Performance profiling

Triaging issues

Systems thinking

Job description

Principal Software Engineer, App Performance

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.

The Consumer App Performance team is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to spearhead stability and performance improvements. You will work across system-level, cross-platform C++ game engine, and front-end codebase, partnering with teams across the company to identify bad behavior patterns and performance bottlenecks, ship measurable improvements, and prevent regressions over time.

Our team owns the end-to-end performance of Roblox, from speed and responsiveness to efficiency and stability, across all devices and platforms we support: mobile, desktop, and console.

You will:

• Drive research of new opportunities, build and execute roadmaps to improve stability and resilience of Roblox across all target platforms
• Design novel solutions to prevent and mitigate crashes, hangs, and other interruptions that hurt user experience.
• Build robust defense mechanisms for early detection of stability anomalies through real-time monitoring, alerting, and CI/CD automation.
• Work with stakeholders across Engineering, Product, and Design to align on priorities, tradeoffs, and rollout plans; ensure performance improvements support the user experience.
• Deliver improvements and guardrails that scale across mobile, desktop, and console, with informed tradeoffs for mobile constraints.

You have:

• 10+ years of experience: working with complex client application codebases, proficiency in C++, knowledge of Lua or other scripting languages is a plus.
• Comfort with ambiguity: able to dive into unfamiliar codebases, unblock yourself, and take projects from greenfield/MVP → production-grade.
• Deep understanding of client platforms: hands-on experience in performance profiling and triaging issues on one or more of mobile or desktop platforms, deep understanding of platform API and best practices to implement performance and robust code.
• Systems thinking: ability to build systems that work and keep on working reliably (measurement, monitoring, regression prevention).

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.