What It’s Like to Interview at Roblox as an Engineer

Whether you’re a new college graduate or an industry veteran, Roblox is always seeking high-performing individuals to join our ranks. Our teams are committed to innovating our platform to ensure Roblox remains a safe and trusted space for tens of millions of daily active users worldwide—and we’re working hard to bring that number up to one billion. To accomplish this, we’re solving some of the most complex challenges across the technology spectrum—large-scale hosting infrastructure, machine learning, cloud services, rendering systems, Lua language optimization, real-time physics simulation systems, and more—all to reimagine the way people come together through shared experiences. Our vision is ambitious, which makes finding quality candidates like you all the more important.

We know there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to interviewing candidates, nor does every company conduct interviews the same way. That’s why we want to share some insights into our own process so you know what to expect and to ensure your experience is as great as it can be. 

For most applicants, we ask that you allow at least two weeks to go through the process, but you can always reach out to your recruiter if you need to move quickly or spread things out.

Getting to Know You

Our hiring process kicks off with a brief introductory call with a member of our Talent Acquisition team. They’ll provide an overview of the company and ask a few questions about your background, why you’re interested in joining Roblox, and what you’re looking for in your career.

Demonstrate Your Skills

The next step is to assess your fundamental technical skills. For most people, this comes in the form of a coding exercise. In some cases, however, typically for higher-level roles, you may be asked to work through a system design exercise or be assigned a take-home project relevant to your role instead.

For interns and entry-level candidates, once you’ve gone through the coding exercise, you’ll also have an opportunity to showcase your systems thinking and situational awareness abilities through a simulation-based cognitive assessment. In this assessment, you’ll be guided through a real-world scenario and given a number of tasks to complete in a 3D interactive environment built on Roblox. There are no right or wrong answers here; rather, we’re simply looking to understand how you approach solving problems. The assessment will track the actions taken and then use data science to assign scores based on the observed decision-making process, allowing for a fair and objective evaluation.

Meet the Team

Once you’ve made it past these initial screening rounds, you’ll engage in a series of one-on-one interviews with several of your potential future teammates, your would-be manager, and at least one member of our senior leadership, allowing you to get a rich diversity of perspectives at Roblox. Usually, this will be done in two rounds, but sometimes in a single “on-site.” The interviewers will dive deeper into your career aspirations and past projects, again focusing on your problem-solving approach, creativity, and critical thinking skills. Depending on the level of the role and the team you applied for, you may also be asked to complete a set of coding and/or design whiteboard exercises during this stage.

Here’s one piece of advice from our Chief Technology Officer, Daniel Sturman:

“We want folks who can demonstrate to us that they’re innovative, long-term thinkers, will go to first principles, and not just do things the way they’ve been done.”

Creative Problem-Solving and Values Interviews

Many of the problems we solve at Roblox are open-ended in nature. They require collaboration, analysis, brainstorming, and the ability to balance multiple competing factors to arrive at a solution that is unique to our goals and priorities. As such, we’ve designed this part of the interview process to assess how well you’re able to think outside of the box and make structure out of ambiguity. Think of this interview NOT as a technical challenge, but as a highly conceptual problem-solving exercise. Again, there are no right or wrong answers. We’re more interested in hearing your thought process as you work with your interviewer to explore the constraints and requirements and then drive towards a reasonable solution. 

“We like folks to take initiative, get things done, have some grit, and say: ‘This is what I’m trying to get done. If something’s in the way, I’m going to figure out how to deal with that problem, not hope someone else comes and solves the problem for me,’” said Sturman.

The Finish Line

Congrats! You’ve made it through the interviews. What’s next? Your recruiter will assemble your candidate packet, which includes your resume, hiring manager summary, and feedback from your interviewers, and then hand it off to our hiring committee for a final review. The hiring committee is comprised of senior leaders from across our engineering organization, each of whom will lend their unique perspective to ensure every person we hire will be able to be successful at Roblox.

One last thing to keep in mind is that our interviews are a two-way street. We want to know you have a high aptitude for technical work, but we’re just as interested in learning about you as a person, what motivates you, and how your values align with ours. Similarly, we’d love to share with you what makes us excited to work at Roblox. We’ve put a lot of thought and care into our interview experience to assess not only your ability to think logically, but creatively as well. So, don’t hesitate to ask your interviewers any clarifying questions and share how you work through complex and ambiguous situations.  

“We are always very curious about what drives you, where do you think you’ve made a difference? What’s something you’re proud of doing? Whether it’s in technology or not in technology, again, we’re looking for that grit, that passion, that drive. That’s important,” said Sturman.

Now that you know what to expect from our hiring process, why not take a look at our open engineering roles at roblox.com/careers and apply today? We look forward to meeting with you!

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