Building for Impact: How Builders Connect Their Work to Roblox’s Mission

Every day, Roblox builders constantly push the boundaries of technology, developing innovative tools and features that enrich the way millions connect, communicate, create, and express themselves. From safeguarding creators’ work to pioneering data-driven product strategies, our builders continue to empower digital expression through a safer online community.

Rubasri Kalidas: Developing Tools That Empower Creators to Protect Their Work

Rubasri’s team develops tools that enable Roblox creators to create, store, and retrieve assets, essential components of any Roblox experience. These could include avatar body parts, models, gear, and even locations.

In a recent project, her team discovered that newly created assets were appearing on public forums before their official launch dates. This was spoiling surprises for players and creating challenges for creators, some of whom were developing their own workaround solutions to keep assets hidden. So, the team solved this by giving creators greater control over how assets are shared and accessed.

In August, the team rolled out the new asset privacy and permission features for audio and video. These features allow creators to share private audio and video assets with creator friends while ensuring complete privacy. The team plans to launch additional features in the coming months as part of a wider initiative to enhance asset privacy and permissions.

At Roblox, teamwork is an essential part of providing millions of creators with a smooth experience. Builders such as Rubasri are a prime example of how collaboration drives our success. “To tackle this project, we worked closely with stakeholders across several teams, each with their own goals and perspectives,” Rubasri says. “We considered numerous solutions, each with their pros and cons. Finding the right one required active listening and learning. Ultimately, we reached consensus, presented a unified proposal to leadership, secured buy-in, and progressed quickly.”

Rubasri Kalidas is a senior software engineer whose work includes developing powerful new tools for creators to protect their work.

Rita Shen: Building Technologies Creators Use to Foster Safety in Their Experiences

Our creators are passionate about building safe and welcoming experiences for players. Along with our teams, they actively work to maintain civility within their experiences. Recently, creators faced the challenge of disruptive users trying to circumvent bans with alternative (alt) accounts. While conducting interviews for a separate project focused on account identification and authorization, Rita uncovered more details about alt accounts, and she soon led the charge to develop effective tools to empower creators to maintain safer spaces for their players.

Rita and her team played a pivotal role in developing account verification tools to help developers enhance moderation within their experiences. They continued to explore a range of methods, including phone number and ID verification (e.g., IsVerified API) to make verification more robust and to enhance safety without disrupting the user experience. ”We didn’t know if players would be willing to verify their accounts, so we ran a series of small experiments to test adoption rates. We were trying to see whether phone number or ID verification performed better,” Rita says.

Eventually, the team developed (Ban API) a new integration that allows developers to tackle repeat offenders head-on by identifying and banning alt accounts that are tied to a single user.

”Building for the community feels like a ground-up movement. We get the chance to innovate directly with them. My work at Roblox feels entrepreneurial because we are empowered to adapt quickly to community feedback,” she says. ”The result is wins on multiple fronts; safety on the platform is improved, and developers have more time to focus on what they are passionate about: creating amazing experiences.”

Rita Shen is a principal product manager who works on building technologies that creators use to foster positivity and safety in their experiences.

Wenjing Zheng: Developing Models That Guide Teams to Make Data-Informed Product Decisions

Wenjing's team builds scalable data science solutions, accelerating product development and enabling data-driven decision-making across the company. “It's about enabling new ways to connect the dots between different parts of the business that we didn't know about before,” Wenjing says.

“We’re growing so rapidly that the pace at which we are building is a common pain point. Sometimes, it can feel like we’re building the plane as we fly it,” she says. “To stay focused, it’s crucial that we're all aligned on priorities. Data helps us objectively measure what matters most and ensure that we build the right things in the right order."

To focus on building the right things, Wenjing and her team created a long-term user value metric model, a tool for guiding product strategy and ensuring alignment with Roblox’s long-term goals.

”This model helps us understand how various product levers and initiatives impact the user experience and the creator ecosystem with the long view in mind,” Wenjing says. ”It serves as that guiding principle for how to take the long view in our product development.”

This project stemmed from a desire to ensure that everyone at Roblox—from individual contributors to leadership—is aligned on those goals and makes product decisions that support them. An example of this work in action is The Hunt, which launched in March 2024.

Wenjing was responsible for evaluating the impact of live events on the community and their value to our business over the longterm. She set out to understand their effect on user joy, visitor numbers, and time spent on the platform.

”It was really exciting to see all the cultural side effects that were created by this event and all the excitement that was there,” she said. The start of the event drew 800,000 users, who went on to complete more than 212 million quests.

Wenjing Zheng, a principal data scientist, has developed a long-term value model that guides teams to make data-informed product decisions.

Building a Better World, Together

As she reflects on her experience, Rubasri says, “I feel like the work I do at Roblox is tied to a bigger purpose than simply delivering projects. We care for the community and what they want. Our leaders encourage us to identify problems and act quickly to find solutions. I am proud to work for a company that respects the community and clears the space for people to spearhead these projects.”

Roblox offers you the opportunity to do career-defining work and make a lasting impact. Ready to build with us? Visit our careers site to learn more and find open jobs.