Senior Software Engineer - Avatar Default Abilities

Roblox • San Mateo, CA

50d

About The Position

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.

Requirements

• 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.
• 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.

Responsibilities

• 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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level