---
title: 'Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Embodied AI and Smart NPCs at Roblox'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/principal-machine-learning-engineer-embodied-ai-and-smart-npcs-roblox-san-mateo-a57q1zsnrx2n'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Embodied AI and Smart NPCs at Roblox

- **Company:** Roblox
- **Location:** San Mateo CA, United States
- **Compensation:** $345k–$399k
- **Posted:** 2026-02-19
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://careers.roblox.com/jobs/7629843?gh_jid=7629843

## Job description

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.

As a Principal Machine Learning Engineer within the Creator Services Machine Intelligence team, you will focus on the research and development of Embodied AI and Behavioral Agents that revolutionize how games are created and played on Roblox. You will bridge the gap between cutting-edge research and massive-scale product application, building agents capable of complex 3D gameplay and unblocking many use cases across Roblox, from automated playtesting to ensure quality, to "ML Players" with human-like movement and strategic reasoning, playing with real players in games. You will work on feature extraction, model training, building validation / RL platform as well as inference set up leveraging methods from imitation learning to reinforcement learning. And you will create generalizable agents that can perceive 3D environments, understand game rules, plan long-term strategies, and execute complex physics-based actions in real-time.

You Will:

- Design and implement foundation models end to end through the feature extraction to inference for embodied agents.
- Define the long-term roadmap for Game AI and Embodied Intelligence, acting as a technical bar-raiser for code quality and architectural design.
- Balance the exploration of cutting-edge deep learning research with the practical constraints of serving models to millions of concurrent users.
- Mentor fellow engineers and researchers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and scientific inquiry.
- Collaborate with Product Managers, Backend and Game Engine Engineers and other Roblox team members.

You Have:

- PhD or Master’s in Computer Science, Applied Math, or other field. A record of top-tier publications (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, AAAI, SIGGRAPH, etc) in embodied agents or related domains is a plus.
- 7+ years of experience as a Machine Learning Engineer or Research Scientist, applying research to tangible products.
- Deep technical understanding of Imitation Learning, Robotics, Reinforcement Learning, Computer Graphics and Vision, with experience working on low-latency motor control (human-like movement) and high-level strategic reasoning (game rules/goals).
- Experience with building large scale data/feature pipeline, simulation environments for evaluation / RL.
- Experience training models on large-scale distributed clusters and understanding the challenges of inference in real-time gaming environments.
- Proficiency in Python (PyTorch/TensorFlow) and familiarity with C#, C++, or similar systems languages.
- A passion for bridging the gap between research and production, moving beyond academic benchmarks to launch scalable solutions that directly impact millions of users.

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](https://careers.roblox.com/total-rewards).

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.

## About Roblox

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Roblox is a global platform where millions of people create, play, and connect in immersive 3D experiences built by a community of developers and creators.
- **Entity Type**: Public (NYSE: RBLX)
- **Headquarters**: San Mateo, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2004
- **Founders**: David Baszucki and Erik Cassel

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Online gaming platform and creation system
- Target customers: B2C (players, especially children and teens) and B2B (creators/developers who build experiences)
- Mission: “Reimagine the way people come together” and “connect a billion people with optimism and civility”

## Products & Services
- **Roblox Platform**: An immersive 3D experience where users can play millions of user-generated games and social experiences. Accessible on mobile, console, desktop, and web.
- **Roblox Studio**: Free, powerful creation tool that allows developers to build, publish, and monetize their own 3D experiences using Lua scripting.
- **Roblox Economy**: Virtual currency (Robux) used to purchase in-experience items, avatar accessories, and developer products. Developers earn real money through the Developer Exchange program.
- **Safety & Moderation Systems**: Multiple layers of content moderation including text filtering, safe training data, and Vision-Language Models to enforce Community Standards.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: As a public company, market cap fluctuates. Recent reports place it around $30–35 billion (early 2026).
- **Key Metric**: Over 150 million daily active users (DAU) and 45 million concurrent users (greater than the population of Canada). Annual revenue for 2024 was approximately $3.5 billion.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Public shareholders; major institutional investors include Vanguard, BlackRock, and others. Strategic partners include Sony, Walmart, and various entertainment brands.
- **Growth Signals**: Scaling toward a goal of 1 billion users; expanding into AI with generative AI and 3D foundation models; opening a new immersive Careers Experience on the platform; strong early-career hiring and internship programs.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Massive Network Effects**: The more creators build, the more players join, attracting even more creators. This flywheel is difficult for competitors to replicate.
- **User-Generated Content Ecosystem**: Roblox Studio empowers millions of creators to generate endless fresh content, keeping the platform sticky and diverse.
- **Safety by Design**: Proactive, layered moderation and AI-driven safety features build trust with parents and regulators.
- **Cross-Platform Ubiquity**: Seamless experience across mobile, desktop, console, and web, reaching a broad global audience.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI & Machine Learning**: Investing heavily in generative AI tools for creators, machine learning systems for the economy, and 3D foundation models.
- **Scaling Infrastructure**: Building backend services and data centers capable of supporting a billion users.
- **Immersive Experiences**: Expanding beyond gaming into social, education, commerce, and live events (e.g., concerts, brand activations).
- **Creator Monetization**: Enhancing tools and revenue-sharing to attract and retain top developers.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & Values**: “Respect the Community, Take the Long View, Be Responsible, Get Stuff Done.” Emphasis on innovation, continuous learning, and ownership.
- **Work Model**: Hybrid – onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in San Mateo; optional Monday and Friday.
- **Compensation & Benefits**: Competitive base salary (e.g., Senior Fullstack Engineer: $242,100–$293,800), plus equity and comprehensive benefits focusing on health, wealth, and happiness.
- **Career Growth**: Early ownership, mentorship from industry leaders, and the chance to ship features to hundreds of millions of users. Interns work on real projects that often go live.
- **Assessment-First Hiring**: Early-career roles use skills-based assessments (coding, problem-solving, decision-making) to reduce bias and level the playing field.
- **Diverse Technical Challenges**: Work across AI, real-time communication, massive data processing, 3D rendering, and more.

## Sources
1. [careers.roblox.com](https://careers.roblox.com/) – Careers homepage, values, and culture
2. [about.roblox.com/engineering](https://about.roblox.com/engineering) – Engineering overview and roles
3. [about.roblox.com/newsroom/2026/01/now-live-the-immersive-roblox-careers-experience](https://about.roblox.com/newsroom/2026/01/now-live-the-immersive-roblox-careers-experience) – 2026 Careers Experience announcement
4. [careers.roblox.com/early-career](https://careers.roblox.com/early-career) – Early career programs and assessment process
5. [careers.roblox.com/jobs/7540814](https://careers.roblox.com/jobs/7540814) – Senior Software Engineer, Fullstack job posting

## Other roles at Roblox

- [Head of Developer Relations, SEA and OCE](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-developer-relations-sea-and-oce-roblox-singapore-n6xrebcjgvam) — Singapore
- [Senior Software Engineer, Creator Core Systems](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-creator-core-systems-roblox-san-mateo-ca-dpf2bvxzmn4j) — San Mateo CA, United States
- [Senior Engineering Manager, Ads Data Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-engineering-manager-ads-data-platform-roblox-san-mateo-ca-5kz516hv5j79) — San Mateo CA, United States
- [Senior Counsel, Litigation](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-counsel-litigation-roblox-san-mateo-ca-hymdm4szt3yr) — San Mateo CA, United States
- [IT Support Technician](https://feeny.ai/job/it-support-technician-roblox-san-mateo-ca-zbv0nahpm1wp) — San Mateo CA, United States
- [Privacy & Security Counsel](https://feeny.ai/job/privacy-security-counsel-roblox-san-mateo-ca-a6qebkpkqj6d) — San Mateo CA, United States
- [Senior Software Engineer, Sharing](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-sharing-roblox-san-mateo-ca-2qz4gm24esbs) — San Mateo CA, United States
- [Brand and Ad Operations Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/brand-and-ad-operations-specialist-roblox-san-mateo-ca-1qvz04fj5apm) — San Mateo CA, United States
- [Senior Software Engineer, Data Engineering (Short Term)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-data-engineering-short-term-roblox-san-mateo-ca-wbc8hmm03yh5) — San Mateo CA, United States
- [Revenue Operations Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/revenue-operations-manager-roblox-san-mateo-ca-jmj1vqr2b0jn) — San Mateo CA, United States