Senior / Principal Data Scientist

About the role

Roblox is seeking an exceptional Senior or Principal Data Scientist to lead discovery initiatives that connect millions of creators with over 70 million daily active users. This high-impact individual contributor role sits at the intersection of machine learning, product strategy, and marketplace economics, directly influencing how users navigate the Roblox metaverse. Reporting to the Senior Director of Data Science, you'll drive the technical and strategic roadmap for critical consumer touchpoints including Home, Search, Matchmaking, and Notifications. This position offers the opportunity to shape ranking algorithms and discovery frameworks that determine which experiences succeed in one of the world's largest user-generated content platforms.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Lead the creation and implementation of sophisticated machine learning solutions and ranking frameworks that power discovery surfaces across the Roblox platform, moving beyond incremental improvements to architect systems that optimize for long-term ecosystem sustainability and user engagement
• Serve as the principal scientific advisor to Product and Engineering leadership teams, translating complex data insights into strategic recommendations that accelerate innovation through comprehensive analytical deep-dives and rapid machine learning prototyping
• Design and execute advanced causal inference methodologies to accurately measure the impact of platform-wide initiatives, accounting for the intricate network effects inherent in social features and site-wide events that traditional A/B testing cannot capture
• Build scalable frameworks that systematize hypothesis generation processes, ensuring experimentation velocity keeps pace with Roblox's explosive growth trajectory and enabling data-driven decision-making across the organization
• Apply first-principles reasoning to navigate ambiguous challenges unique to two-sided marketplaces, such as optimizing the delicate balance between promoting established high-performing experiences and surfacing emerging niche user-generated content
• Develop economic and social frameworks that govern which creator experiences gain visibility and traction, directly influencing the marketplace dynamics that affect millions of developers and billions of engagement hours
• Partner cross-functionally with engineering teams to productionize machine learning models and analytical frameworks, ensuring research insights translate into scalable platform capabilities
• Create succinct, compelling narratives that distill high-dimensional technical problems into actionable recommendations for executive audiences without quantitative backgrounds
• Drive the analytical roadmap for discovery experiences, identifying opportunities through data exploration and establishing measurement frameworks that capture both immediate metrics and long-term platform health indicators
• Mentor and influence data science practices across the organization, establishing best practices for experimentation design, causal inference, and machine learning applications in marketplace contexts
• Innovate on ranking algorithms that account for the unique characteristics of user-generated content platforms, where content quality, creator incentives, and user preferences create complex optimization landscapes
• Build measurement systems that capture the nuanced success metrics of a social platform, going beyond simple engagement metrics to understand community health, creator sustainability, and user satisfaction

Requirements

• Hold an advanced degree at the Master's or PhD level in a quantitative discipline including Statistics, Computer Science, Physics, Applied Mathematics, Economics, or closely related field demonstrating rigorous analytical training
• Bring a minimum of 10 years of professional experience in Data Science, Economics, or Machine Learning Engineering roles, or at least 6 years for candidates with doctoral degrees, specifically within large-scale recommendation systems or user-generated content platforms
• Demonstrate expert-level proficiency with modern data stack technologies including Python, R, SQL, Hive, Spark, and Airflow, with hands-on experience building production data pipelines and analytical workflows
• Possess deep theoretical understanding and practical implementation experience with Deep Learning architectures, including familiarity with frameworks and their application to ranking and recommendation problems
• Show proven ability to design sophisticated experimental frameworks that properly account for the statistical complexities of two-sided marketplaces, including network effects, spillover, and interference between treatment groups
• Exhibit strong communication skills with demonstrated ability to translate complex quantitative findings into clear, actionable insights for non-technical stakeholders and executive leadership
• Have track record of driving strategic product decisions through data science, with examples of influencing roadmaps and prioritization at organizations with significant scale
• Display expertise in causal inference methodologies beyond standard A/B testing, including techniques for observational causal inference, difference-in-differences, synthetic controls, or instrumental variables

Nice to have

• Experience specifically with recommendation systems or discovery surfaces at consumer internet companies serving tens of millions of daily active users
• Background working in marketplace or platform businesses where you've balanced competing interests between supply-side and demand-side participants
• Publications or contributions to the data science community demonstrating thought leadership in machine learning, causal inference, or experimentation methodologies
• Familiarity with the gaming industry, virtual worlds, or user-generated content ecosystems and their unique analytical challenges
• Experience mentoring junior data scientists or leading technical initiatives across multiple teams without direct management authority

Skills & tools

Python, R, SQL, Hive, Spark, Airflow, Deep Learning frameworks, causal inference methodologies, experimental design, machine learning ranking systems, recommendation algorithms, statistical modeling, data visualization, two-sided marketplace analytics

Practical notes

• Office presence required three days weekly (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) at San Mateo headquarters with flexibility on Mondays and Fridays
• All full-time employees receive equity compensation in addition to base salary
• Comprehensive benefits package available as detailed on Roblox careers page
• Actual compensation within the stated range depends on professional background, training, work experience, business needs, and market conditions
• Roblox provides reasonable accommodations for candidates with qualifying disabilities or religious beliefs throughout the recruiting process
• The company maintains equal employment opportunity policies prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability, genetics, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other protected characteristics
• This role offers high visibility and direct impact on products used by over 70 million daily active users globally
• Position provides opportunity to shape the future of how people discover and engage with immersive digital experiences in the metaverse

META

Company: Roblox

Title: Senior / Principal Data Scientist

Listed

location: San Mateo, CA, United States