Technical Director, Roblox Studio

Roblox; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 399,000 - 458,000; Full time

Job summary

Roblox Studio is the creation engine behind millions of immersive 3D games. You will own the technical direction of Studio, shaping architecture, performance, and long‑term success as a hands-on contributor. This role requires deep C++ expertise and a track record in building large-scale systems.

You will lead core desktop IDE capabilities, mentor teams, and drive performance improvements while partnering with product and design to deliver fast, reliable creator tooling at scale.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in Computer Science/Engineering or related field, MS/PhD a strong plus.
• 12+ years of engineering experience building high‑performance C++ systems and long‑lived platforms.
• Proven expertise in memory management, concurrency, data structures, and real‑time systems.
• Strong background in creator tooling, developer tools, or IDE‑like platforms with focus on speed and reliability.
• Experience building high‑performance client applications and keeping desktops responsive under heavy workloads.

Responsibilities

• Define and lead the technical roadmap for Roblox Studio and its toolchain with emphasis on performance, responsiveness, and extensibility.
• Design and build core systems for a high‑performance desktop IDE: startup, editing, edit-test loop, debugging tooling, and framework support.
• Lead as a hands‑on contributor, setting architecture and engineering standards across Studio teams.
• Author and review design documents and specifications for foundational Studio features.
• Drive end-to-end performance work: profiling, bottlenecks, latency, memory, and throughput improvements across the application.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, and design to deliver fast, reliable, and intuitive creator tooling.
• Spread reusable patterns and raise the engineering bar across Studio.

Skills

C++

High-performance systems

Concurrency

Memory management

Developer tooling

Technical leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher in CS/CE

Tools

Profiling tools

Debugging tools

Graphics/real-time rendering (nice to have)

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.

Every day, tens of millions of people come to Roblox to explore, create, play, learn, and connect with friends in 3D immersive digital games- 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 game 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 games for everyone.

About the role:

Roblox Studio is the creation engine behind millions of immersive 3Dgames built by creators around the world. It serves everyone from first-time developers to large professional studios, combining a powerful real-time engine with a deeply expressive toolchain.

Studio is a demanding piece of software in its own right- a high-performance desktop application and IDE that must stay fast and responsive while creators build, script, debug, and test increasingly complex worlds.

In this role, you will own the technical direction of the Studio application and its creator tooling. You will be accountable for the architecture, performance, and long-term success of Studio as a high-performance application and IDE. This is a hands-on individual-contributor role where you set the technical direction, design the architecture, write the code, and raise the bar across teams through influence and example.

You will:

• Define and lead the technical roadmap for the Roblox Studio application and toolchain, with a focus on performance, responsiveness, and extensibility.
• Design and build the core systems behind a high-performance desktop IDE: application startup, editing, the edit-test loop, debugging tooling, and the frameworks creators and internal teams build on.
• Lead by example as a hands-on individual contributor while setting architectural and engineering standards across Studio.
• Author and review design documents and technical specifications for foundational Studio features.
• Drive performance work end to end by profiling, finding real bottlenecks, and improving latency, memory, and throughput across the application.
• Partner closely with engineering, product, and design teams to deliver creator tooling that is fast, reliable, and intuitive.
• Bring reusable patterns and best practices to teams across Studio, raising the engineering bar of Studio as a whole.

You have:

• You have a Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a similar technical field. An MS or PhD is a strong plus.
• 12+ years of engineering experience developing high-performance, large-scale C++ systems, including ownership of large, long-lived platforms.
• A proven track record in areas such as memory management, concurrency, data structures, or real-time systems.
• A strong background in creator tooling, developer tools, or IDE-like platforms, and an understanding of what makes these products fast, reliable, and pleasant to use.
• Experience building and optimizing high-performance client applications, with deep knowledge of how to keep a large desktop application responsive under real workloads.
• Strong systems and software engineering skills with the ability to design complex architectures and write production-grade code.
• A proven ability to set technical direction and raise quality across multiple teams as an individual contributor, influencing through technical expertise, mentorship, and clear communication with engineers and executives alike.
• Nice to have: Experience with graphics and real-time rendering.
• Nice to have: Experience building debugging and profiling tooling for developers.

You are:

• An innovative technical leader who wants to build the tools that power the creativity of millions.
• Product-minded, with a real understanding of developer needs and creator workflows, and how technical decisions land in the user experience.
• User-centric, starting with the end user and striving for performance, usability, and reliability whether building for internal engineers or external creators.
• Versatile and curious, fluent in C++ and comfortable working across a wide range of systems.
• Able to operate at the deepest technical levels and still communicate direction clearly to partners.
• A mentor and culture builder who uplifts those around you and fosters a culture of collaboration, technical rigor, and continuous learning.

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$399,420-$457,970 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.