Working at Roblox: Meet Luna Sun

Luna is a Senior Software Engineer on the Game Engine Rendering team at Roblox. She focuses on achieving the best visual quality on any device and browser. 

Describe your team’s role here at Roblox.

I’m on the Game Engine Rendering team, and I focus on improving the visual quality of experiences on Roblox. For example, adding cool effects and new materials and improving material quality, reality, and rendering performance. Our goal is to achieve the best visual result with minimal cost. Additionally, because Roblox is accessible for any use from any device, we test our features on all kinds of devices, from high- to low-end. When we build a new feature, part of the process includes figuring out how to gracefully fallback if a device doesn’t support it. This ensures that our developers can use features without worrying about accessibility. 

What is one of the most interesting aspects about working on your team at Roblox?

We have such a creative creator/developer community on Roblox. Every time we announce a new feature in our developer forum, we get lots of feedback and amazing images of developed experiences using our new features. It’s satisfying to see a feature you’ve built get used in creative and unexpected ways. Also, we respect our community, and we are part of the community. Some of our colleagues were members of the developer community before they joined Roblox as employees. 

How is your experience on the team at Roblox different from other roles you’ve had?

Before joining Roblox, I worked for a mobile game company in China. At my previous company, we were always trying to ship features on a tight deadline and often worked overtime. This mode of operation gave us less time to think about and thoroughly test new technologies. 

At Roblox, our value to “take the long view” is the biggest difference. Every feature we ship is  carefully designed and thought through. Because we seldom delete APIs, once something new is released, we need to be prepared to maintain it for years. Another difference is the talent and knowledge on the Game Engine team. There is so much I can learn from them, and people are always helpful. Finally, Roblox has a wonderful work-life balance thanks to realistic deadlines and great benefits.

What are the most interesting projects you’ve worked on and things you’ve learned while working at Roblox?

When I joined Roblox, my first project was to work on the “trail” effect that would let developers add a sense of motion to objects like swords. At the time, this seemed like an impossible task, but I made it happen! When I announced the new feature on a forum post, it received tremendous feedback and that was very rewarding. Because Roblox experiences are all dynamic, it’s challenging to design new features and there is seldom existing technology that can be applied to our engine directly. We have to be creative, and it’s really satisfying when that creativity is well received by our community.

What’s one thing you love about the culture at Roblox?

As I mentioned earlier, our “take the long view” value is what I love most. I think this is one of the reasons for Roblox’s success and longevity. I often run into situations where something can be achieved in several different ways. When we discuss it, we focus on whether it will be scalable and still be compatible if we add new features in the future. This helps us avoid making short-sighted decisions that are easy to implement in the present time but potentially detrimental in the long-term.

Interested in joining the Game Engine team at Roblox? We’re always looking for new talent, so check us out at corp.roblox.com/careers/ and see if there’s a role that’s right for you.