Roe grew up in the countryside in Shropshire. He went to Rugby School, was an undergraduate at Cambridge University, and received his D.Phil. in 1985 from the University of Oxford under the supervision of Michael Atiyah. As a post-doctoral student, he was at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley, and then a tutor at Jesus College, Oxford. From 1998 until shortly before his death he was a professor at the Pennsylvania State University.
