Our UI Engineers build experiences used and enjoyed by millions of people around the world every day – from core device interfaces and home screen features to advertising platforms, payments, and interactive entertainment experiences.
The work is broad, technically demanding, and often unlike traditional frontend engineering. We build high-performance UI systems for low-memory, low-power devices, where every frame, animation, and allocation matters. If you enjoy solving hard engineering problems, owning what you build, and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible on constrained hardware, you’ll feel at home here.
What do UI Engineers work on at Roku?
UI Engineering at Roku spans everything from large-scale platform development to experimental interactive experiences that push the platform forward. Approaches vary widely and no two teams work on the same problems.
Projects can include:
- Building immersive, game-like experiences in Roku City, the hugely popular scrolling metropolis that appears when Roku devices are idle.
- Navigating complex privacy and compliance requirements while developing global payment and subscription experiences for Roku Pay.
- Creating platform capabilities that enable major entertainment brands to deliver richer, more engaging user experiences on TV.
- Building internal tooling, UI frameworks, and performance infrastructure that improve how teams across Roku develop and ship products.
"The AI adoption that’s going on at Roku right now is awesome from a UI Engineering point of view. If you want to grow your AI skills, there’s no better company you could be in."
Richard, Hiring Manager
What makes UI Engineering at Roku unique?
Building for TV devices is fundamentally different from building for web, mobile, or desktop.
Our UI Engineers work within extremely constrained environments while still delivering experiences that feel modern, responsive, and visually polished.
The challenge of delivering premium user experiences with minimal hardware resources is not for everyone. But if you already have some experience in the problem space, this is a great opportunity to put your ingenuity to the test and solve complex engineering problems at scale.
Is Roku a good place to grow
my AI engineering skills?
We like to think there’s no better place in the world.
A few years ago, we bet that AI-forward fluency paired with deep systems judgment would be the most powerful combination in engineering today – and we’ve been investing heavily in AI-powered engineering workflows and tooling ever since.
Today, our UI Engineers are heavily immersed in agentic workflows, advanced developer tooling, and practical applications of AI that improve how we build, test, and ship software.
If you actively experiment with new tools, contribute to open-source projects, and get excited thinking about where AI-driven engineering is heading next, you’ll be in good company here.
What tools and technologies do UI engineers use at Roku?
Our engineers are free to use whichever tools they need to do their best work – whether that's C++, TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Python, OpenGL, modern AI-assisted development tooling, or anything else. We also have proprietary UI technologies such as BrightScript and SceneGraph, which power many of the experiences delivered across the Roku platform.
How much ownership do
UI Engineers have at Roku?
A lot. Our UI Engineering teams are made up primarily of senior engineers who are trusted to take full ownership of their work – whether that’s a marquee experience on the Roku home screen, a new platform capability, or an internal developer tool.
Working collaboratively with UI Designers, QA Engineers, and Product Management teams, you’ll drive projects from end to end and will have real influence over both the technical direction and final product experience.
What kind of engineers thrive at Roku?
The people who do best here tend to be:
- Strong engineers with a sharp eye for detail and user experience.
- Comfortable working close to hardware and performance constraints.
- Curious, adaptable, and excited by technically difficult problems.
- People who enjoy a high level of ownership and autonomy.
- AI enthusiasts who build agentic applications with frameworks like Google ADK and LangGraph and are excited by the idea of what’s coming next.
Many of our engineers tinker outside of work too – whether that’s experimenting with hardware, building side projects, contributing to open source, or exploring new AI frameworks and workflows.
If that sounds familiar, you’ll probably fit right in.
Ready to live life in the
fast stream as a UI Engineer?
We currently have jobs available in our Cambridge office.
