Senior Data Scientist - Engine Systems

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 CORE ENGINE?

The Core Engine team is missioned to build world-class elastic game engine technology that powers engaging experiences. We build the core technology that powers our 3D worlds including rendering, simulation, networking and systems. As a Senior Data Scientist, you'll partner with engineers, data scientists, technical program managers, and leaders across the company in our efforts to improve the quality and performance of our game engine and the user generated content that runs on top of it. Your work will touch every part of the engine, from threading and memory management to physics and scripting. You will define top line metrics and measure the impact of critical features and improvements, while discovering areas of opportunity through dashboards, analysis and A/B experiments. You will report directly to the Data Science Leader overseeing our Core Engine DSA team.

You Are:

• Passionate about data. You have the curiosity applying new techniques and tools to extract value from data. You have a degree in Statistics, Economics, Computer Science, Operations Research or other relevant fields.
• Enthusiastic and engaged. You understand that analysis must be presented in meaningful ways and lead spirited discussions about the findings. You can explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences and discuss appropriate tradeoffs.
• An expert collecting and transforming data with SQL and a scripting language such as Python or R. You're experienced in automating efforts and crunching massive volumes of data using big data frameworks such as Spark, Hadoop or Flink.
• Experienced at developing models to draw insights from data. You use regression techniques, data mining, statistical techniques and deep learning to create new, scalable solutions to solve difficult business problems. You understand when to apply the appropriate methodology, tool, framework to maximize impact.

You Will:

• Establish success metrics for Engine Systems performance -- e.g. what systems performance metrics matter to the end-users? How are Engine performance affecting user engagement and monetization?
• Operationalize and scale metrics monitoring. Build dashboards that enable quick slice and dice as well as root cause analysis. Work with engineers to detect and investigate abnormal trends. Identify opportunities to improve.
• Understand how networking, rendering, simulation and more help build a fast, scalable and engaging experience through the game engine. Apply dynamic approaches to improve user experience from the Engine perspective by controlling these factors.
• Navigate uncharted areas and collaborate with partners across different organizations including Engine, Growth, and Creator teams.
• Access raw data, and then transform it, analyze it, and render it in a compelling way - all using a custom analytics tool kit built from state-of-the-art open-source libraries.
• Use A/B experiments and causal inference to determine success of product feature launches.
• Influence how Roblox provides a better experience for the community of players and developers.

You Have:

• Advanced Degree and/or PhD in Statistics, Computer Science, Physics, Applied Math, Economics, Engineering or other related quantitative fields
• 5+ years of relevant industry experience; background in game engine, system performance, etc.
• Data engineering experience. e.g. telemetry logging, data pipeline building, dashboard design
• Experience applying creative first-principles reasoning to solve ambiguous problems
• Experience leading and presenting analytics results and enjoy data storytelling to influence engineering teams and leaders
• Experience driving an area as an individual contributor and thought leader