Senior Software Engineer, Realtime Analytics Platform

Roblox Corporation; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 243,000 - 295,000; Full time

Job summary

Roblox Corporation is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Real-time Analytics Platform. You will design, build, and scale core OLAP infrastructure powering sub-second analytical queries across Roblox using StarRocks, Apache Druid, and streaming ingestion through Kafka and Flink.

You will own the architecture, drive performance optimizations, and guide data modeling best practices while collaborating with infra, data science, and product engineering teams.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience building production-grade, distributed systems.
• Hands-on experience with StarRocks or related OLAP engines.
• Streaming ingestion architecture using Kafka and Flink, or Debezium/CDC pipelines.
• Data modeling and query optimization for massive scale.
• Strong foundations in Java, Go, C++, or Scala.
• Experience with Kubernetes & Terraform on AWS or GCP.

Responsibilities

• Own and scale core OLAP platforms: StarRocks and Apache Druid.
• Optimize query engine performance under heavy concurrent load.
• Architect streaming ingestion pipelines using Kafka, Flink, and native load mechanisms.

Skills

Java

Go

C++

Scala

Education

B.S. in CS

Tools

StarRocks

Apache Druid

ClickHouse

Apache Doris

Apache Pinot

Trino/Presto

Kafka

Flink

Kubernetes

Terraform

Job description

Senior Software Engineer, Realtime Analytics Platform

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.

Your Role:

Roblox's data infrastructure processes petabytes of data daily, powering analytics, ML, and product decisions for a platform serving 200M+ daily active users. As a Senior Software Engineer on our Real-time Analytics Platform team, you will design, build, and scale the core OLAP infrastructure powering sub-second analytical queries across Roblox. Our team directly owns and operates StarRocks and Apache Druid, driving high-throughput streaming ingestion and low-latency MPP query processing. You will lead the next-generation architecture of our real-time analytics platform, combining high ownership and deep technical complexity to push the boundaries of MPP engine performance, streaming ingestion pipelines, and cluster scalability.

You Will:

• Own and Scale Core OLAP Platforms: Take end-to-end ownership of the architecture, operational health, and scalability of our high-throughput OLAP engines, specifically StarRocks and Apache Druid.
• Optimize Query Engine Performance: Dive deep into engine internals, cost-based optimization (CBO), query planning, vectorized execution, memory optimization, and serialization efficiency to maximize throughput and maintain sub-second latency under heavy concurrent load.
• Architect Streaming Ingestion Pipelines: Design, build, and optimize real-time data ingestion paths leveraging Apache Kafka, Apache Flink and native engine load mechanisms.
• Drive OLAP Data Modeling Best Practices: Partner with infra, data science, and product engineering teams to guide data modeling for MPP databases, optimizing partitioning, bucketing, sort keys, and materialized views.
• Manage Cluster Infrastructure & Capacity: Lead cluster provisioning, lifecycle management, operations, and capacity planning using Kubernetes and Terraform across cloud environments.
• Advance Autonomous Interfaces: Integrate AI/ML and LLM-driven capabilities within our query platforms to enable automated self-serve mechanisms and intelligent data discovery for engineers.

You Have:

• 6+ years of experience building, designing, testing and maintaining production-grade, large-scale distributed systems.
• Deep OLAP & MPP Engine Depth: Strong hands-on engineering or operational experience with StarRocks or adjacent OLAP engines such as Apache Druid, ClickHouse, Apache Doris, Apache Pinot, or Trino/Presto.
• Streaming & Ingestion Architecture: Proven track record implementing high-volume streaming ingestion using Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Routine Load / Broker Load, or Debezium/CDC pipelines.
• Data Modeling & Query Optimization: Expertise in OLAP schema design (partitioning, bucketing, sort keys, indexing) and tuning cost-based SQL query engines for massive scale.
• Strong Engineering Foundations: Robust proficiency in Java, Go, C++, or Scala, with a track record of writing clean, highly performant distributed backend code.
• Infrastructure & Orchestration: Experience operating, troubleshooting, and provisioning data infrastructure at scale using Kubernetes and Terraform on AWS or GCP.
• Technical Leadership: Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across teams, mentor engineers, and drive alignment on complex cross-cutting initiatives.
• B.S. equivalent in CS or sufficient experience.
• Bonus Points:
  • Core contributions to open-source OLAP databases (StarRocks, Apache Druid, ClickHouse, Apache Doris).
  • Experience operating real-time analytical platforms at consumer-internet scale (100M+ active users).

Annual Salary Range

$243,290 - $295,250 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.