Technical Director - Data Science (Discovery)

About Roblox

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.

Why Data Science & Analytics?

The Data Science & Analytics organization's mission is to increase our speed, frequency and acumen of making decisions at scale by instilling a data-influenced approach to building products. We cover a wide area of the data spectrum including analytical data engineering, product analytics, experimentation, causal inference, statistical modeling and machine learning. Aligned and partnering with product verticals, we use this extensive tool belt to discover new opportunities and unmet use cases, influence and shape the product roadmap and prioritization, build data products and measure impact on our community of players and developers.

Why Discovery Experiences?

We're seeking senior data scientists with expertise in machine learning to join our Discovery Experience team. As IC leaders (individual contributors with a large span of influence), you'll drive strategic decisions for user growth and product innovation, leveraging all data science toolkits (analytics, experimentation, forecasting, and ML solutions) to improve end-to-end consumer journeys on Roblox. The roles will primarily focus on Discovery Experiences. Discovery surfaces (i.e. home, search, matchmaking, notifications) are critical to fostering engagement and long-term relationships with our platform. The complex network of our two-sided marketplace, combined with the ever-evolving metaverse, presents exciting challenges.

This role will report directly into the Senior Director of Data Science (Consumer) and will be based at our headquarters in San Mateo, CA (hybrid, onsite days Tues-Thurs).

What You'll Do

• Develop foundational solutions to scale the hypothesis generation process across key user engagement touchpoints.
• Contribute directly to the development of ML solutions that power our discovery canvases alongside our sister engineering teams.
• Partner closely with Product and engineering leaders to inform, drive and accelerate innovations in discovery experiences via Insights, frameworks, causal inference solutions and machine learning prototypes.
• Leverage advanced causal inference methodologies to measure the effectiveness of various initiatives, ranging from Roblox events to social features susceptible to network effects.
• Conduct exploratory analysis to identify and advise XFN partners on opportunities for strategic investments.
• Design and implement experiments for new features and communicate results succinctly to non-technical audiences.

What You'll Need

• Advanced Degree and/or PhD in Statistics, Computer Science, Physics, Applied Math, Economics, or other related quantitative fields
• 10+ years of industry experience in data science, economics, analytics, or machine learning engineering
• 7+ years of experience using scripting languages (Python, R), and big data query/processing languages and tools such as SQL, Hive, Spark, and Airflow
• Knowledge of ML and Deep Learning either via formal training or industry experience
• Ability to apply creative first-principles reasoning to solve ambiguous problems
• Experience developing large-scale recommendation systems as well as experience with content platforms, specifically user-generated content

Compensation & Benefits

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
$373,680—$430,430 USD

Roles that are based in an office are onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with optional presence on Monday and Friday (unless otherwise noted).

Equal Opportunity

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.

Key skills/competency

• Data Science
• Machine Learning
• Python
• SQL
• Spark
• Data Engineering
• Product Analytics
• Experimentation
• Causal Inference
• Recommendation Systems