Senior Data Scientist, Engine Systems

Every day, tens of millions of people come to Cobalt Streamworks 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 Cobalt Streamworks, 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 Cobalt Streamworks 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. WHY DATA SCIENCE & ANALYTICS? The Data Science & Analytics organization's mission is to increase our speed, frequency and acumen of making decisions at scale by instilling a data-influenced approach to building products. We cover a wide area of the data spectrum including analytical data engineering, product analytics, experimentation, causal inference, statistical modeling and machine learning. Aligned and partnering with product verticals, we use this extensive tool belt to discover new opportunities and unmet use cases, influence and shape the product roadmap and prioritization, build data products and measure impact on our community of players and developers. WHY ENGINE Systems? Engine Systems team builds the foundational systems for networking, servers, asset loading, and data management, all working in harmony to deliver stable and engaging experiences. This role will focus on the System foundation that provides low level technology to enable efficient development of Cobalt Streamworks itself and the games within it. We build profiling support, concurrency, memory management, scalability systems, and crash reporting. We manage the user experience in real-time and monitors device constraints (like a low-end phone vs. a high-end PC) and adjust graphics and performance on the fly. You Will: Define Reliability & Stability Metrics – Work on system metrics telemetry logging and validation. Establish key performance indicators for Engine systems such as crash rates, runtime error codes, and quality metrics that directly impact creators and players. Transform & Visualize Data for Actionable Insights – Access and process raw telemetry data, build robust analytics pipelines and deliver clear insights. Help develop solutions that allow the Engine to intelligently scale quality up or down, ensuring that every player—regardless of their hardware—has a smooth, interactive, and immersive experience. Design Experiments & Apply Causal Inference – Lead A/B experiments and causal analyses to identify performance opportunities, understand the trade-offs between system stability and other quality factors, measure improvements and feature launches to ensure data-driven decision-making. Drive Cross-Functional Collaboration – Partner closely with Engineering, Product, Technical Program Managers, and teams across Cobalt Streamworks (e.g., Creator Analytics, Growth, Infrastructure, and Economy) to explore new opportunities and navigate ambiguous problem spaces. Shape the Future of Cobalt Streamworks’s Foundation – Influence how Engine systems evolve, help deliver a scalable, high-performance, and creator-empowering platform. You Have: Advanced degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering, or a related field with a focus on large-scale system analysis. 4+ years as a Data Scientist, with a proven track record of working on high-volume telemetry, product quality optimization. Expertise in processing massive, noisy datasets (like crash logs or telemetry pings) and building scalable pipelines for reporting. Experience using first-principles reasoning to debug complex, ambiguous system failures that don't always have a clear cause. Experience presenting deep technical results to Engineering leaders and using data storytelling to prioritize work and future investment. Direct experience with game engines or systems performance preferred Experience in game development or working on real-time interactive systems preferred A background or interest in memory management, or OS-level interactions preferred #LI-FO1 #LI-Onsite 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 $221,380 — $263,670 USD Roles that are based in an office are onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with optional presence on Monday and Friday (unless otherwise noted). Cobalt Streamworks 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. Cobalt Streamworks also provides reasonable accommodations to candidates with qualifying disabilities or religious beliefs during the recruiting process. For US based roles only, please note the Company may not be able to employ candidates for this role who have United States work authorization related to certain U.S. visa categories, or support future H-1B sponsorship at this time.