🚀 On Building Scalable Test Infrastructure for Roblox’s Multi-Platform Future

Hi, I’m Bobby, a backend engineer specializing in testing infrastructure & frameworks, developer productivity, and distributed systems. I’ve spent my career at companies like Netflix 🍿 & Twitter 🐦 building high-leverage frameworks and tools to help engineers ship with confidence at scale.

Why I’m Excited About the Test Foundations Team

I’m genuinely excited about the opportunity to join Roblox’s Test Foundations team and help build the next generation of device orchestration and test automation infrastructure. This role sits at the intersection of everything I love: frameworks, libraries, utilities and tools that support team members in shipping high quality products via testing. I want to work on foundational platforms that unblock and accelerate the product & QA, and engineering teams alike.

Why I Am Exicted About the Role

🌎 Multiplatform Support (Mobile, Desktop, Console, VR)

At Netflix, I helped build a platform-agnostic test insights system that unified the company’s paved-path development ecosystems.

Each Roblox platform has its own APIs, input methods, device constraints, and deployment tooling. I look forward to the challenge of designing abstractions that hide the complexity of platform-specific implementations.

I see multiplatform support as an opportunity to bring structure to complexity. One of my core engineering philosophies is: “the deeper you understand a problem, the simpler the design becomes.”

🧰 Device Farm Manager: A Rare and Focused Opportunity

Few roles are so clearly scoped yet foundational in impact. Leading the development of the Device Farm Manager (DFM) means owning:

Unified Test Execution Framework Enable teams to trigger, track, and report tests consistently across platforms.
Dynamic Fleet Scaling & Health Monitoring Leverage telemetry to auto-quarantine flaky devices and optimize resource usage.
Deep Test Observability Surface fleet utilization, flake rates, test coverage, and execution trends with real-time dashboards.
Developer-Centric Integration Lower the barrier to adoption through intuitive APIs and thoughtful integrations.

This kind of project demands thoughtful scoping, reliability engineering, and team collaboration—skills I’ve developed through years of leading test infrastructure initiatives.

⚖️ Test Automation Primitives & Orchestration

Roblox’s job description mentions developing test automation primitives that orchestrate across platforms. Here are a few relevant systems I’ve worked on:

Test Runners & Abstractions: My experience with Fasttest at Twitter involved building runners for system, unit, CI and load tests. These modular interfaces are similar to what Roblox will need for platform-specific test orchestration.
Reporting & Results Modeling: At Netflix, I contributed to Test Insights, modeling results across diverse languages and ecosystems. Designing extensible test metrics pipelines is squarely in my wheelhouse.
Execution Orchestrators: I know the challenges of system testing at scale—retries, timeouts, flaky infrastructure, logging, quarantining. I want to tackle these challenges so that execution and results become trusted sources of truth.
Test Case Definition: I believe a great test is one where the input, execution, and expected output are easy to define and easy to read.

My Goals for Test Infrastructure:

Standardized abstractions across all platforms
Extensibility for team-specific customization
Clear separation between orchestration and test logic
Composable, developer-friendly APIs to drive adoption

🛠️ Physical Device Management

The DFM must account for the physical realities of devices:

Monitoring: Health checks, battery levels, connectivity status
Quarantine: Auto-remove unstable devices from rotation
Lifecycle: Automate resets, OS upgrades, baseline reverts
Metadata: Track version, rack location, status, etc.

Partnering with reliability and infra teams to define strong observability and alerting would be a priority.

🧮 Strategic Considerations

Scope Definition

This space is deep. Defining scope early will be key. What does MVP support for the DFM look like? How do we deliver value quickly without overextending?

Measurement & Impact

To prove value, we need to measure:

Current test coverage, flake rate, test time and device utilization
QA and developer friction points
Release confidence before and after DFM improvements

Build vs. Buy

While it seems Roblox has opted to build in-house, I would still want to:

Understand what isn’t scaling in current solutions
Evaluate trade-offs of vendor vs. in-house tooling
Prioritize early wins while setting long-term direction

I’d also look at open source solutions for inspiration and lessons learned.

Stakeholder Personas

How will QA, product, site reliability, and developers interact with the DFM? What are the essential features they need for adoption?

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Knowing when to build vs. collaborate is key. For example, I might prototype a dashboard but would partner with design for refinement and to ensure its UI is consistent with company standards. Strong cross-functional relationships are critical for widespread adoption and long-term reliability.

💬 Leadership & Mentorship

Led the multi-quarter roadmap and technical vision for the Developer Platform Quality Engineering Team at Twitter
Mentored engineers from SWE 1 to promotion, and supported intern-to-full-time conversion
Organized org-wide demo days at Hazel Health to promote visibility and cross-team collaboration

📬 Let’s Connect

I’m excited to bring my experience to the Roblox Test Foundations team and help shape the future of test infrastructure for a platform used by millions.

Bobby Owolabi
📄 Resume Download
✉️ bobby@bobbyowolabi.com
🌐 bobbyowolabi.com
🔗 Connect on LinkedIn

“Build tools that accelerate everyone else — that’s the multiplier effect I’m passionate about.”