Senior Engineering Manager, Search and Discovery

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 mission of the search and discovery team is to connect a billion users with the best connections and content at the right time, covering an extremely diverse range of recommendations and search problems at high scale.  This is  fundamental to how we personalize the experience to drive engagement and retention for Roblox users. Our recommendation systems suggest all games that the users see and play with across all surfaces. As a Senior Engineering Manager for the Search & Discovery ML team, you will lead the architects of exploration for one of the world's largest immersive platforms. You will be responsible for the core algorithms that connect over 120 million daily active users with millions of 3D experiences, items, and social connections. This is a high-impact leadership role where your team’s models directly determine the growth, retention, and satisfaction of the Roblox community. You will move beyond traditional recommendation systems into the realm of multimodal, agentic, and generative discovery.

You Will:

• Lead and grow a high-performing team of machine learning engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and engineering excellence.
• Establish a long-term strategic framework for the home page ML models
• Collaborate with the ML platform team, data science, and product teams to deliver SoTA ML models. 
• Oversee the end-to-end development life cycle, ensuring timely delivery of high-quality, robust ML solutions.
• Mentor and coach team members, providing continuous feedback and career development guidance.
• Manage cross-functional projects and communicate progress, risks, and challenges to leadership and stakeholders.

You have:

• 5+ years of management experience and 8+ years of experience building machine learning systems.
• Experience in hiring, managing, and mentoring senior machine learning engineers and technical leaders.
• Deep knowledgeable about the best practices for SoTA machine learning architecture and algorithms.
• Skill at driving technical strategy and roadmap planning in ambiguous and fast-paced environments.
• Established strong, collaborative relationships with cross-functional partners and senior leadership.
• Passion about fostering a high-trust, no-blame culture that prioritizes growth-oriented mentorship and psychological safety.
• Knowledge in the machine learning life cycle and the data requirements for training, serving, and monitoring models.
• Strong communication, both written and verbal, capable of articulating complex technical concepts to a diverse audience.
• A BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, or a related technical field or have equivalent practical experience.
• Experience with SoTA ML models and solutions.
• Experience with applying advanced ML solutions to product problems.

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$345,040—$399,420 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.