Principal Software Engineer, Data Engineering

Segment (Twilio); San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 295,250 - 345,040; Full time

Job summary

A leading gaming platform is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to define data ontology and lead a team in San Mateo, California. This role requires 8+ years of experience with ETL pipelines, SQL, and cloud services while collaborating with Data Science and Engineering teams. Key responsibilities include building data pipelines, developing analytical frameworks and establishing best practices for data operations. The expected salary ranges from $295,250 to $345,040 USD annually, depending on experience and qualifications.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional experience building scalable ETL pipelines on industry standard tools.
• 3+ years leading data engineering development with business or data science stakeholders.
• Experience with Multi-Terabyte data sets and large-scale analytics challenges.
• Familiarity with at least one major cloud provider's offerings.
• Developed or enhanced ETL orchestration tools or frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Partner with teams to define the data ontology for all of Roblox.
• Lead and mentor a team of Data Engineers.
• Design, build, and maintain efficient batch and streaming data pipelines.
• Develop scalable frameworks and tooling for analytics workflows.
• Establish best practices for data operations and lifecycle management.

Skills

ETL pipelines

SQL

PySpark

Scala

Data Science collaboration

Cloud services (AWS, GCP, Azure)

GitOps practices

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.

The Data Engineering team at Roblox plays a crucial role in enabling the company's success by developing and maintaining highly leveraged Core Data Sets, frameworks, and tooling to support the growing demand for analytics.

As a Principal Data Engineer, you will work to define the data ontology for all of Roblox, establish best practices and standards for data operations and lifecycle management, design and build analytics tooling and frameworks, and influence event instrumentation. Additionally, this role is highly cross‑functional, requiring close collaboration with Data Science, Experimentation, and Machine Learning teams to understand customer requirements and analytics applications, as well as with Data Infrastructure and Storage teams to develop integrated solutions.

Join us and be a part of a dynamic team driving innovation and growth at Roblox.

You Will:

• Partner with Data Science, Data Platform, Product, and Engineering to collect requirements to define the data ontology for all of Roblox
• Lead and mentor a growing team of Data Engineers to support Roblox's ever‑evolving data needs
• Design, build, and maintain efficient and reliable batch and streaming data pipelines to model business entities as core data sets
• Develop scalable frameworks and tooling to automate analytics workflows and streamline users interactions with data products
• Establish and evangelize best practices for data operations and lifecycle management

You Have:

• 8+ years of professional experience working building scalable ETL pipelines on industry standard ETL orchestration tools (Airflow, Dagster, Luigi, Google Cloud Composer, etc.) with deep expertise in SQL, PySpark, or Scala.
• 3+ years leading data engineering development directly with business or data science stakeholders
• Built, scaled, and maintained Multi‑Terabyte data sets and have an expansive toolbox for debugging and unblocking large‑scale analytics challenges (skew mitigation, sampling strategies, accumulation patterns, data sketches, etc.)
• Experience with at least one major cloud's suite of offerings (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Developed or enhanced ETL orchestrations tools or frameworks
• Worked within standard GitOps workflow (branch and merge, PRs, CI / CD systems)

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

$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.