Principal Software Engineer Jobs for OPT Students
Principal Software Engineer jobs are among the most OPT-friendly senior roles in tech. Most positions qualify as specialty occupations under H-1B standards, making OPT-to-H-1B transitions straightforward. STEM OPT extensions apply if your degree is in computer science, software engineering, or a related field, giving you up to three years of authorized work.
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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.
How to Get Visa Sponsorship as a Principal Software Engineer
Lead with your OPT timeline upfront
Principal-level hiring moves slowly. Tell recruiters your OPT end date and STEM extension eligibility in your first message. It saves both sides time and signals you understand the sponsorship process, which matters at this level.
Target companies with established H-1B pipelines
Companies that have sponsored dozens of H-1B petitions are far more likely to sponsor again. Look for employers with legal teams experienced in immigration. Startups under 50 people rarely have the infrastructure to support senior visa sponsorship.
Frame your seniority as sponsorship ROI
Employers weigh sponsorship cost against retention risk. Principal engineers represent multi-year investments in leadership and architecture. Emphasize your scope of impact clearly so hiring managers can justify the sponsorship internally to legal and finance teams.
Get clarity on the H-1B cap-exempt option
Universities, nonprofit research institutions, and government labs are cap-exempt H-1B employers. As a Principal Engineer, these organizations offer competitive roles and can sponsor year-round without lottery risk, which is worth exploring alongside private-sector opportunities.
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Get Access To All JobsFrequently Asked Questions
Can I work as a Principal Software Engineer on OPT?
Yes, if your degree is in a qualifying STEM field such as computer science or software engineering. Principal Software Engineer roles consistently meet the specialty occupation standard, which requires a bachelor's degree or higher in a specific technical discipline. That alignment makes OPT authorization and future H-1B sponsorship straightforward for this job title.
Do Principal Software Engineer roles typically qualify for STEM OPT extension?
Yes. If your underlying degree is on the STEM designated degree program list, Principal Software Engineer positions almost always satisfy the practical training requirement because the role directly applies engineering and computer science knowledge. Your DSO at your university confirms eligibility, but this job title rarely presents issues with STEM OPT extension approval.
How competitive is the job market for OPT students at the Principal Engineer level?
Principal-level roles require eight or more years of experience and demonstrated leadership, so the candidate pool is smaller than for mid-level positions. OPT students who have progressed to this level through U.S. work history or strong international experience are genuinely competitive. You can browse Principal Software Engineer roles open to OPT candidates on Migrate Mate.
What happens to my OPT status if my Principal Engineer offer falls through after I resign from my current employer?
You have a 60-day unemployment grace period during OPT. At the Principal level, job searches can take two to four months, which means the grace period may not be enough buffer. Avoid resigning before a written offer is in hand, and start your search early so you have overlap between your current role and the new one.
Do I need to find an employer willing to sponsor H-1B before accepting a Principal Software Engineer role on OPT?
Not immediately, but you should confirm sponsorship willingness before accepting. OPT authorizes work independently of H-1B, so you can start the role on OPT. However, if the employer won't commit to H-1B sponsorship and your OPT period ends before you secure another status, you'll lose work authorization. Clarify sponsorship intent during the offer stage.
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