SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Salary: USD 419,390 - 457,970 / annual
Roblox is seeking a Distinguished Engineer/Technical Director to lead the technical vision and execution for all machine learning initiatives across search and discovery teams. The role focuses on connecting billions of users with the best content and connections at the right time, covering diverse search and recommendation problems at massive scale. This work is fundamental to personalizing the Roblox experience and driving user engagement and retention.
You will own the technical direction and implementation of machine learning solutions powering search and recommendation systems that drive content distribution. You'll author specifications for new features and improvements, set AI strategy, push the frontier of recommendation technology, and drive business outcomes across candidate generation, ranking, objective functions, and value delivery for both users and developers.
Key responsibilities include building and evolving infrastructure for training, serving, and evaluating traditional ML models and generative AI models (embedding-based retrieval, transformers, LLM-based workflows). You'll co-design models and systems at the intersection of model architecture and infrastructure, partnering closely with core modelers, data and AI infrastructure engineers, and product teams to push the boundaries of large-scale training and serving.
As a technical leader, you'll lead other engineers by example and through technical direction as an individual contributor, creating a culture of engineering excellence. You'll become an authority on the technology stack, ensuring new solutions are built the right way. You'll collaborate across Roblox teams with a community and company-first attitude, balance researching new technologies with practical implementation, and serve as an ambassador for Roblox in industry and community contexts.
The role is based in San Mateo with hybrid flexibility: onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with optional presence on Monday and Friday.
Requirements:
- 10+ years of experience with a consistent record of delivering and improving large-scale search and recommendation systems
- Experience crafting and building large-scale machine learning models with billions of parameters and launching them into production
- Ability to break down long-term product requirements into iterative deliverable stages
- Track record of initiating and facilitating challenging technical decisions across multiple teams and organizations; empathetic and able to find common understanding
- Deep technical expertise with user-centric approach (both for Roblox users and internal engineers)
- Generalist mindset with mastery of several languages and technologies; ability to adapt easily
- Willingness to roll up sleeves to tackle data and machine learning problems
- Creative and strategic problem-solving approach; ability to simplify complexity and bring fresh ideas
- BS in Computer Science or related discipline (MS/PhD preferred)
