Principal Software Engineer - Service Networking

<div class="content-intro"><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">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.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">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.</span><strong> </strong><span style="font-weight: 400;">We’re on a mission to connect a billion people with optimism and civility, and looking for amazing talent to help us get there.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">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.</span></p></div><p>Roblox’s Service Networking team connects and secures the services behind our platform across our data centers and cloud infrastructure.</p> <p>As a Principal Software Engineer on Service Networking, you will set technical direction and lead hands-on development of the systems that make service-to-service communication reliable, secure, and efficient. You will guide the evolution of our Envoy- and Istio-based platform as services move across Kubernetes, Nomad, and cloud environments. You will partner with Compute, Security, and application teams, and help senior engineers lead complex technical work.</p> <p>You will:</p> <ul> <li>Set the technical strategy and roadmap for service mesh, balancing reliability, security, performance, and operating cost.</li> <li>Design and build control-plane and data-plane capabilities for service discovery, routing, load balancing, and traffic policy using Envoy, Istio, and related technologies.</li> <li>Lead integration and migration across Kubernetes, Nomad, and cloud environments, with clear compatibility requirements and safe rollout plans.</li> <li>Partner with Security and application teams to deliver workload identity, mutual TLS, and traffic policy enforcement in production.</li> <li>Improve resource efficiency and operational reliability through performance analysis, testing, observability, incident response, and deployment automation.</li> <li>Lead technical decisions across teams, write and review production code, and mentor senior engineers to expand their judgment and ownership.</li> </ul> <p>You have:</p> <ul> <li>8+ years of software engineering experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems, including leading substantial initiatives across teams.</li> <li>Expertise in service mesh, proxies, application gateways, or a closely related infrastructure domain, demonstrated through systems you have designed, shipped, and operated.</li> <li>A strong understanding of networking fundamentals, service discovery, traffic management, failure isolation, and secure service communication.</li> <li>Strong programming skills in Go, C++, Rust, or another systems language, with experience debugging across application, proxy, control-plane, and operating-system boundaries.</li> <li>Experience operating Kubernetes or comparable orchestration platforms in production and leading infrastructure migrations or performance improvements. Envoy/Istio internals, xDS, workload identity, and substantive open-source contributions are especially relevant.</li> <li>A record of turning ambiguous problems into technical direction and coordinated execution, communicating tradeoffs clearly, and helping other engineers lead independently.</li> </ul> <p><strong>You’ll Love:&nbsp;</strong></p> <ul> <li>Industry-leading compensation package</li> <li>Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage</li> <li>A rewarding 401k program</li> <li>Flexible vacation policy</li> <li>Roflex - Flexible and supportiv