J-1 Visa Principal Software Engineer Jobs
Principal Software Engineer roles in the U.S. are accessible to international professionals through the J-1 visa under the Trainee or Research Scholar program category, depending on your background. Designated sponsors issue your DS-2019 and coordinate sponsorship with your host employer, giving you a structured path into senior engineering positions without a lottery.
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Get Access To All JobsINTRODUCTION
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. 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. We’re on a mission to connect a billion people with optimism and civility, and looking for amazing talent to help us get there. 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.
As a Principal Software Engineer on Creator Services Data, you’ll be leading the company’s efforts to build the next generation Data Storage systems to power the millions of experiences on the Roblox Platform. We run the mission critical cloud services, Data Stores, Memory Stores, and Badges, which are crucial for storing game state such as inventory and scores, implementing leaderboards, server lists, and trading, and tracking player progress and achievements. Our team is also responsible for building dashboards to provide insights to Creators using cloud services including Client/Server Performance, Data Stores, and Memory Stores. Finally, our team owns the Roblox Extended Services platform, which provides the capability for large experiences to purchase additional resources for existing services like Data Stores and new services built around compute and generative AI. At its core, this team is focused on solving complex back end distributed systems and storage problems at scale. However, our scope extends to full stack projects spanning all the way from the infrastructure layer, through data storage and data pipelines, microservices, telemetry, game servers, web development, UI, and UX design. This team collaborates on multiple cross-company efforts and our projects are of extremely high importance to Roblox.
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
You Will
- Lead the design and development of improvements to existing products and design new cloud services to support our Creator Community.
- Build state-of-the-art data storage systems including infrastructure, serving layers, clients, and web APIs.
- Expand the internal and customer facing cloud service observability capabilities through metrics collection, data pipelines, intelligent analytics, data visualization, and dashboards.
- Increase the capabilities and onboard new customers to the Roblox Extended Services platform.
- Work with our users (Creators) to identify product gaps and bugs and handle customer emergencies.
- Provide on-call support for our Data products including responding to production alerts and outages.
- Mentor junior engineers and provide technical and non-technical guidance through design and code reviews, joint projects, 1:1s, and peer feedback.
- Lead collaborations on a cross-functional team including UX design, product management, project management, developer relations, documentation, customer support, and other engineering teams.
- Become a recognized technical leader across the company and contribute to company-wide initiatives.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
You Have
- 10+ years background in software development building with public clouds (AWS, Azure, and GCP), microservices and distributed systems
- 3+ years experience building and maintaining (not just using) data storage systems (relational databases, key/value stores, blob stores, etc)
- 10+ years designing, implementing, testing, and deploying robust, scalable, and well documented production-grade code
- 6+ years programming in C# and/or C++ (ideally both)
- 6+ years experience working on agile, fast-paced, high-impact software teams
- 4+ years leading junior engineers and new graduates on complex software engineering projects
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
Desired (one or more of)
- Prior experience building big data pipelines or batch processing systems (MapReduce, Hadoop, Flink, Spark, Flume)
- Prior experience programming computer games, particularly in Lua/Luau
- Prior knowledge of data science, data analytics, machine learning, or AI
- Prior experience building graphical user interfaces, dashboards, or web application front ends
YOU ARE
- Innovative: We strive for novel solutions that bridge the technical needs of Roblox with the creative needs of our developer community. This typically involves tackling competing objectives and thinking creatively.
- Passionate: We are looking for new team members who are passionate about data storage technology, computer games, and software development. We are excited about building new products that will redefine the future of human online interaction.
- Versatile: The Data Pod is expanding its scope beyond providing low level storage solutions to building higher level services such as User Profiles and LiveOps Analytics. We are also working on projects such as Observability and Billing & Payments platforms. You need to be ready to learn new programming languages and tech stacks as we evolve.
- Responsible: Data Storage services cannot go down and cannot lose data. You are committed to join a team that strives for a 100% uptime and data durability.
- Team Oriented: You are ready to both guide and learn from others. You will set the standard on team collaboration and communication. You exemplify Roblox Values and Principles.
COMPENSATION
For roles that are based at our headquarters in San Mateo, CA: The starting base pay for this position is as shown below. The actual base pay is dependent upon a variety of job-related factors such as professional background, training, work experience, location, business needs and market demand. Therefore, in some circumstances, the actual salary could fall outside of this expected range. This pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. All full-time employees are also eligible for equity compensation and for benefits as described on this page.
- Annual Salary Range: $345,040—$399,420 USD
Roles that are based in an office are onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with optional presence on Monday and Friday (unless otherwise noted).
Roblox provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Roblox also provides reasonable accommodations to candidates with qualifying disabilities or religious beliefs during the recruiting process.
INTRODUCTION
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. 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. We’re on a mission to connect a billion people with optimism and civility, and looking for amazing talent to help us get there. 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.
As a Principal Software Engineer on Creator Services Data, you’ll be leading the company’s efforts to build the next generation Data Storage systems to power the millions of experiences on the Roblox Platform. We run the mission critical cloud services, Data Stores, Memory Stores, and Badges, which are crucial for storing game state such as inventory and scores, implementing leaderboards, server lists, and trading, and tracking player progress and achievements. Our team is also responsible for building dashboards to provide insights to Creators using cloud services including Client/Server Performance, Data Stores, and Memory Stores. Finally, our team owns the Roblox Extended Services platform, which provides the capability for large experiences to purchase additional resources for existing services like Data Stores and new services built around compute and generative AI. At its core, this team is focused on solving complex back end distributed systems and storage problems at scale. However, our scope extends to full stack projects spanning all the way from the infrastructure layer, through data storage and data pipelines, microservices, telemetry, game servers, web development, UI, and UX design. This team collaborates on multiple cross-company efforts and our projects are of extremely high importance to Roblox.
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
You Will
- Lead the design and development of improvements to existing products and design new cloud services to support our Creator Community.
- Build state-of-the-art data storage systems including infrastructure, serving layers, clients, and web APIs.
- Expand the internal and customer facing cloud service observability capabilities through metrics collection, data pipelines, intelligent analytics, data visualization, and dashboards.
- Increase the capabilities and onboard new customers to the Roblox Extended Services platform.
- Work with our users (Creators) to identify product gaps and bugs and handle customer emergencies.
- Provide on-call support for our Data products including responding to production alerts and outages.
- Mentor junior engineers and provide technical and non-technical guidance through design and code reviews, joint projects, 1:1s, and peer feedback.
- Lead collaborations on a cross-functional team including UX design, product management, project management, developer relations, documentation, customer support, and other engineering teams.
- Become a recognized technical leader across the company and contribute to company-wide initiatives.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
You Have
- 10+ years background in software development building with public clouds (AWS, Azure, and GCP), microservices and distributed systems
- 3+ years experience building and maintaining (not just using) data storage systems (relational databases, key/value stores, blob stores, etc)
- 10+ years designing, implementing, testing, and deploying robust, scalable, and well documented production-grade code
- 6+ years programming in C# and/or C++ (ideally both)
- 6+ years experience working on agile, fast-paced, high-impact software teams
- 4+ years leading junior engineers and new graduates on complex software engineering projects
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
Desired (one or more of)
- Prior experience building big data pipelines or batch processing systems (MapReduce, Hadoop, Flink, Spark, Flume)
- Prior experience programming computer games, particularly in Lua/Luau
- Prior knowledge of data science, data analytics, machine learning, or AI
- Prior experience building graphical user interfaces, dashboards, or web application front ends
YOU ARE
- Innovative: We strive for novel solutions that bridge the technical needs of Roblox with the creative needs of our developer community. This typically involves tackling competing objectives and thinking creatively.
- Passionate: We are looking for new team members who are passionate about data storage technology, computer games, and software development. We are excited about building new products that will redefine the future of human online interaction.
- Versatile: The Data Pod is expanding its scope beyond providing low level storage solutions to building higher level services such as User Profiles and LiveOps Analytics. We are also working on projects such as Observability and Billing & Payments platforms. You need to be ready to learn new programming languages and tech stacks as we evolve.
- Responsible: Data Storage services cannot go down and cannot lose data. You are committed to join a team that strives for a 100% uptime and data durability.
- Team Oriented: You are ready to both guide and learn from others. You will set the standard on team collaboration and communication. You exemplify Roblox Values and Principles.
COMPENSATION
For roles that are based at our headquarters in San Mateo, CA: The starting base pay for this position is as shown below. The actual base pay is dependent upon a variety of job-related factors such as professional background, training, work experience, location, business needs and market demand. Therefore, in some circumstances, the actual salary could fall outside of this expected range. This pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. All full-time employees are also eligible for equity compensation and for benefits as described on this page.
- Annual Salary Range: $345,040—$399,420 USD
Roles that are based in an office are onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with optional presence on Monday and Friday (unless otherwise noted).
Roblox provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Roblox also provides reasonable accommodations to candidates with qualifying disabilities or religious beliefs during the recruiting process.
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Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding J-1 Visa Sponsorship as a Principal Software Engineer
Align your credentials to the Trainee category
The J-1 Trainee category requires a degree or professional certificate plus at least one year of related experience outside the U.S. Gather transcripts, employment letters, and a portfolio of systems-level work before approaching any host employer.
Map your engineering background to a training plan
Designated sponsors require a formal Training/Internship Placement Plan before issuing the DS-2019. Outline specific technical objectives, mentorship structure, and measurable milestones tied to your Principal-level responsibilities so the plan satisfies compliance review.
Search for host employers on Migrate Mate
Use Migrate Mate to filter Principal Software Engineer roles at U.S. companies whose hiring patterns align with J-1 exchange visitor programs. Targeting employers already familiar with host-organization obligations shortens the sponsorship conversation significantly.
Clarify the two-year home residency requirement early
Certain J-1 participants funded by their home government or in skills-shortage fields must return home for two years before changing status to H-1B or a green card. Confirm your eligibility status before accepting a host employer offer to avoid blocking future immigration options.
Request a named Research Scholar sponsor for PhD-level roles
If your Principal Engineer role involves original research at a university lab or R-and-D institute, the Research Scholar category may fit better than Trainee. Sponsors like IIE or Cultural Vistas administer both, but the DS-2019 category you receive affects duration and program rules.
Verify your host employer's compliance obligations upfront
The host employer must sign the training plan, provide adequate supervision, and carry workers' compensation coverage. Ask HR to confirm these before your designated sponsor submits the DS-2019 to avoid delays caused by a non-compliant host site.
Principal Software Engineer jobs are hiring across the US. Find yours.
Find Principal Software Engineer JobsPrincipal Software Engineer J-1 Visa: Frequently Asked Questions
Which J-1 program category fits a Principal Software Engineer?
Most Principal Software Engineers use the J-1 Trainee category, which applies to professionals with a relevant degree and at least one year of post-degree work experience gained outside the U.S. If the role is research-focused at a university or corporate R-and-D lab, the Research Scholar category may apply instead. The designated sponsor, not the hiring employer, makes the final category determination based on your background and the training plan.
Who actually sponsors my J-1 visa as a Principal Software Engineer?
A U.S. Department of State-designated sponsor organization issues your DS-2019 form and holds legal responsibility for your exchange program. The tech company or research institution hiring you is the host employer, not the visa sponsor. Organizations like Cultural Vistas, IIE, and AIPT administer Trainee and Research Scholar programs and handle compliance monitoring throughout your stay.
How do I find Principal Software Engineer host employers open to J-1 exchange visitors?
Search Migrate Mate for Principal Software Engineer roles and filter for companies whose hiring patterns align with exchange visitor programs. Because the J-1 does not go through USCIS petition processing the way H-1B does, many engineering employers are unfamiliar with it. Targeting teams that have hosted J-1 participants before, or those with international research partnerships, significantly reduces the education burden during your job search.
Can the two-year home residency requirement affect my career plans after a J-1 placement?
Yes. If your exchange program is funded by your home government, or if your home country designated your occupation as a skills-shortage field, you may be subject to INA Section 212(e), which requires two years of home-country residence before you can change to H-1B status or apply for a green card. A J-1 waiver through a federal agency or state health department can remove this requirement in certain cases, but the process adds time and is not guaranteed.
Does the J-1 visa have an annual cap or lottery for software engineering roles?
No. The J-1 exchange visitor program has no annual numerical cap and no lottery. Designated sponsors issue DS-2019 forms year-round as long as program slots are available and the training plan meets Department of State requirements. This makes the J-1 a more predictable timeline than the H-1B for Principal Software Engineers entering the U.S. for structured training or research purposes.
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