Principal Software Engineer, Ads Experience

About the role

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. With Roblox's daily active users growing at a record pace, we are building the next generation advertising in an immersive metaverse. Our team sits at the core of the Roblox Ads ecosystem, serving billions of impressions while providing the critical infrastructure that connects global brands with our massive community of creators. We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to drive technical strategy and execution for the Ads Experience team. This team is responsible for the full spectrum of our monetization experience, including Advertiser Experience (Roblox Ads Manager), Brand Experience (Brand Ads & Brand Ads & Integrations), and Publisher Experience (Creator Monetization & Commerce). This is a foundational technical challenge beyond standard ad-tech. You will architect the high-scale backbone of our monetization system, driving the technical vision for our Ads Manager, immersive Brand Ads formats, and creator solutions, while pioneering AI integration and balancing a three-sided marketplace economy in real-time.

Key facts

What you'll do

Architect the Roblox Ads Manager: Design and build the end-to-end technical architecture for our flagship advertising platform, ensuring it can handle complex campaign state management, real-time reporting, high-volume asset ingestion, and intelligent recommendations to optimize campaign goals.

Architect the Brand Ads Offering: Design and build the end-to-end ads system - including forecasting, serving and delivery - to support reservation, auction, and innovative brand ads. You will leverage the uniqueness of 3D to create immersive offerings (video, portals, deep integrations) that enable advertisers to foster brand awareness and attain their business goals.

Enable Creator Success: Architect the systems facilitating seamless onboarding and management of monetization integrations (Rewarded Ads, Commerce, Immersive Ads), provide comprehensive reporting dashboards for payouts and insight metrics, and build solutions allowing creators to promote their games using ads.

Drive Technical Strategy: Act as the technical authority for the organization, translating ambitious business goals - such as new campaign objectives or novel ad formats - into concrete, multi-year technical roadmaps.

Innovate with AI: Spearhead the strategic application of AI across the ecosystem, exploring future capabilities such as Gen AI for multi-modal creatives (Text, Image, 3D) and intelligent assistants designed to empower advertisers and creators to achieve success.

Lead & Mentor: Mentor junior and senior engineers, conduct design reviews, and set the standard for code quality and system reliability across the team.

Collaborate cross-functionally with Data Science, Product, and Infrastructure teams to define requirements, prioritize technical debt, and ensure robust, scalable delivery.

Define and enforce platform standards, best practices, and operational excellence across all ad-related services and interfaces.

Own the full lifecycle of major features, from initial discovery and requirements gathering through implementation, testing, and post-launch iteration.

Champion performance, reliability, and security considerations in all design decisions, ensuring alignment with Roblox global-scale operations.

Partner with business stakeholders to translate high-level objectives into detailed technical specifications and execution plans.

Evaluate emerging technologies and tools to optimize the ad tech stack, scalability, and developer productivity.

Communicate technical tradeoffs and progress to both technical and non-technical audiences, aligning on goals and timelines.

Contribute to hiring decisions by providing technical perspective and defining role expectations for senior-level growth.

Requirements

8+ years of experience developing complex software products, with at least 3+ years in a Technical Lead role.

Ads Domain Expertise: Deep understanding of the Ad Tech stack, including Campaign Management, Reporting, Creative, Ad Serving, Measurement, and Ad Delivery.

Full-Stack & Distributed Systems Mastery: Proven ability to design and scale high-availability backend systems using technologies like Go or C# and data processing tools (Spark, Flink), combined with a strong grasp of modern frontend architectures (React, TypeScript) to build responsive, data-heavy user interfaces.

Product Collaboration: Proven track record of partnering closely with Product Management and Design to define product vision, scope requirements, and drive execution.

Ownership and Bias for Action: Demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguity, take ownership of complex problems, and deliver results in a fast-paced environment.

Communication and Leadership: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with experience leading technical discussions and influencing without authority.

Integrity and Judgment: Strong judgment and integrity, with a commitment to making decisions that prioritize long-term platform health and user trust.