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.
The Avatar Team is at the heart of the Roblox experience. We build and evolve the systems that define how every player shows up in the metaverse — from how avatars look and move, to how they express themselves and interact with the world. Our work sits at the intersection of engine technology, animation, safety, and creator tools, and it has to scale to hundreds of millions of players across millions of experiences.
As a Senior Software Engineer on the Avatar Default Abilities team, you will own the technical design and implementation of a growing library of high-quality default abilities for the platform avatar and ability manager. You will take abilities from concept to production, define patterns and abstractions that other teams can build on, and ensure our default abilities feel great, perform well, and work reliably across the full diversity of Roblox experiences and devices.
You Will:
- Develop avatar abilities that push the quality bar far beyond what was previously thought possible on the platform, combining state-of-the-art animation techniques with the practical constraints of a massively scaled real-time system.
- Design, implement, and ship new default abilities end-to-end - from early prototypes and technical exploration through productionization, rollout, and ongoing iteration.
- Build robust, reusable systems on top of the platform avatar and ability manager so that abilities are composable, data-driven, and reliable across millions of experiences and billions of avatar configurations.
- Collaborate extensively with world-class designers, animators, engine engineers, and product leadership to translate creative ability concepts into technically sound, performant implementations usable by every player.
- Define and uphold engineering best practices for ability development (architecture, documentation, testing, automation, and observability) to keep the abilities library maintainable as it grows.
- Profile, optimize, and harden abilities for performance and stability across a wide range of devices, from low-end mobile hardware to high-end PCs and consoles.
- Partner with Studio, engine, and creator-facing teams to ensure abilities are easy for developers to integrate, configure, and extend within their own experiences.
- Use qualitative feedback and quantitative signals (e.g., engagement, performance metrics, error reports) to debug complex runtime behaviors and continuously improve the feel, responsiveness, and reliability of abilities.
- Mentor other engineers, sharing deep expertise in avatar animation, character systems, and large-scale engine development, and help shape the long-term technical roadmap for default abilities on Roblox.
You Have:
- A strong technical foundation, with a BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent experience in the gaming, animation, or software industry.
- Advanced expertise in avatar or character animation systems, with hands-on experience building and shipping state-of-the-art runtime animation pipelines.
- Proven software engineering excellence in C++ and a high-level scripting language such as Lua or Python, including experience designing, implementing, and maintaining complex, performance-sensitive systems.
- Prior experience working with CG interactive characters — rigging, movement, behaviors and actions — and integrating them into modern game engines, animation systems, and/or large-scale real-time platforms.
You Are:
- A collaborative team member who thrives in cross-functional environments, partnering closely with artists, designers, and platform owners while mentoring other engineers.
- Mission-driven and excited about building a safe, high-quality, and civil metaverse where expressive avatars are core to how people connect.
- A proven problem solver who is comfortable operating in ambiguous spaces, driving 0-to-1 solutions for complex technical problems, and iterating quickly based on data and feedback.
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
$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.