Senior Data Scientist - Authentication

Roblox; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 221,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Job summary

Roblox is seeking a data science leader for Authentication & Security to shape roadmap and improve sign-up, login, and account-recovery flows using a data-first approach.

You will quantify security friction, evaluate feature experiments, and partner with Product, Engineering, Policy, Legal, and UX Research to turn complex problems into clear decisions.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in data science, analytics, or ML engineering.
• 2+ years scripting with Python or R; strong SQL/Hive/Spark/Airflow.
• Experience building large-scale safety or moderation systems for content platforms.
• PhD/advanced degree in quantitative field.

Responsibilities

• Define roadmaps for authentication and security using data science.
• Identify levers to improve sign-up, login and account-protection flows.
• Design experiments across sign-up, login, and account-recovery funnels.
• Quantify tradeoffs between security friction and user protection and engagement impact.
• Develop evaluation metrics and ground-truth labeling strategies for models.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Policy, Legal, and UX Research to solve problems.
• Translate friction points into actionable product recommendations.
• Communicate insights to leadership to drive prioritization and tradeoffs.

Skills

Data science

Analytics

ML engineering

Python/R

Creative reasoning

Safety systems

Content platforms

Education

Advanced degree or PhD in Statistics/CS/Physics/Applied Math/Economics

Tools

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 AUTHENTICATION & SECURITY?

Authentication & Security sits at the intersection of trust, product, and growth. The team builds the systems that allow users to sign in, recover, and protect their accounts with confidence, while defending the platform against account takeovers, credential abuse, and fraud at massive scale. This role is an opportunity to shape a high-stakes product area where small changes in friction or protection can meaningfully affect sign-ups and user frequency. You will act as a strategic leader, helping make authentication and account-recovery flows more seamless and secure while strengthening our systems against abuse.

You Will:

• Shape Authentication & Security roadmaps with strategic data science guidance across account creation, login, account recovery, and account protection features.
• Identify and size the highest-impact levers to improve authentication success rates, reduce account takeover rates, and minimize unnecessary user friction.
• Design and evaluate feature experiments across sign-up, login, and account-recovery funnels.
• Quantify tradeoffs between security friction and user protection, and assess how each influences downstream engagement and retention.
• Develop evaluation metrics and ground-truth labeling strategies to strengthen our account security detection models.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Policy, Legal, and UX Research to turn ambiguous problems into clear decisions.
• Translate friction points in the authentication and account-recovery journey into actionable product recommendations.
• Communicate insights to leadership and cross-functional partners to drive prioritization and tradeoff decisions.

You Have:

• 5+ years of industry experience in data science, economics, analytics, or machine learning engineering
• 2+ 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

Annual Salary Range

$221,380—$263,670 USD

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).

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.