Research Manager

With around 2000 employees and 25 researchers, we rely on constant innovation to support a disproportionately large amount of content and players. This also means that we are a large enough company to achieve our vision and a great work environment, but still small enough that each scientist can have tremendous impact on the product, player community, and culture.

This is an opportunity to build the next generation of social, 3D, and distributed computing interfaces in a world-class fundamental research lab. Roblox presents a tremendous international laboratory for experiments with real users, data, client devices, and servers at scale. We're looking for experts in the following technical areas:

• Distributed Systems, focused on scaling real-time interactive experiences to tens of thousands of players in the same fully-simulated environment
• Voice and Natural Language Processing, focused on applying NLP, machine learning, and signal processing techniques for chat moderation, voice avatars, latency and bandwidth minimization, real-time natural-language translation, quality, Text-to-Speech (TTS)/Speech-to-Text (STT), accessibility, and 3D audio
• Content Creation, focused on accelerating game and asset creation for experts, and make it approachable for novices, across 3D shapes, mechanical parts, narrative & non-player character artificial intelligences, lighting rigs, material synthesis, and code-less programming.

Research scientists report to VP of Research and Chief Scientist, Morgan McGuire, and are encouraged to engage with local universities. E.G. participating in university reading and research groups, delivering guest lectures or (occasional) full courses, or in holding an academic title. In all, they may spend up to 10% of their time in approved, compensated academic appointments.

You will:

• Work closely with engineers to identify new 3-5 year research opportunities and frame constraints on solutions
• Solve fundamental challenges important to Roblox's vision and business
• Recruit and mentor graduate interns
• Mentor or manage junior scientists and engineers
• Establish collaborations with leading faculty around the world
• Perform hands-on research, including participating in data collection and programming for experiments and prototypes
• Publish and present research findings in top-tier peer-reviewed venues
• Patent inventions
• Transfer technology into the product by shepherding it through engineering
• Advise product groups on advances across the field

You have:

• A Ph.D. or equivalent research experience in any field
• Have equivalent experience to a Masters degree in Computer Science systems
• Identified and framed new research challenges for the field
• Published multiple peer-reviewed articles in top-tier venues every year
• Sought societal impact and real-world validation for your work by driving product direction
• Have worked in, consulted for, or collaborated with industry R&D groups
• Regularly collaborated with and mentored graduate students
• Served on conference programme committees
• Frequently presented research at conferences and invited university talks
• Used and contributed to open source and data

You are:

• A recognized expert in the community for your domain
• Proficient in C++ and Python and several libraries for your domain
• Identify and frame new research challenges for the field
• Publish multiple peer-reviewed articles in top-tier venues every year
• Collaborating with academic peers in your field
• Proficient in C++ and Python and several libraries for your domain