Sr Staff Software Engineer

It all started when engineer Fred Luddy wrote code that automated a tedious task for his coworker, Phyllis. She cried tears of joy. That moment inspired Fred to build a company that could do that for everyone—freeing people from busywork so they could focus on meaningful work. Today, ServiceNow is the AI control tower for business reinvention. Our ServiceNow AI platform brings together any AI, any data, and any workflow— helping 85% of the Fortune 500® work smarter, faster, and better. We're building an AI-native culture where technology and talent are unstoppable together. And we're just getting started.

Join us to put AI to work for people.

Job Description

We are looking for a Sr Staff Software Engineer (IC5) to help build and evolve the foundational platform capabilities that power our products and engineering organization.

As a Sr Staff Engineer, you will own significant technical domains and critical platform capabilities, defining their architecture, technical direction, and roadmap. You will design and build highly reliable, performant, secure, and scalable platform building blocks that can be leveraged across multiple engineering teams.

This is an AI-native engineering role. You will use AI, LLMs, coding agents, and agentic development workflows as first-class engineering tools across the software development lifecycle—from understanding problems and designing solutions to implementation, testing, debugging, documentation, and operations. You will also help establish the engineering practices and platform capabilities required to build and operate AI-powered products at scale.

You will operate with a high degree of autonomy, driving months-long initiatives that span multiple teams and have complex technical dependencies. You will identify problems before they are assigned, challenge the status quo, and continuously improve the platform and how engineering teams build software.

Key Responsibilities Platform Architecture & Technical Ownership

• Design, build, and evolve highly reliable, performant, secure, and scalable platform building blocks.
• Own the technical direction and evolution of multiple platform areas.
• Define and influence the platform team's technical roadmap in partnership with engineering and product leadership.
• Lead architecture and design for complex distributed systems, services, APIs, and platform capabilities.
• Evaluate architectural patterns, technologies, and tooling and make pragmatic decisions based on scalability, reliability, security, performance, and developer experience.
• Establish reusable engineering patterns, standards, frameworks, and tooling that can be adopted across teams.
• Continuously identify opportunities to simplify architecture, eliminate technical debt, and improve platform capabilities.

AI-Native Engineering

• Treat AI as a first-class engineering capability across the software development lifecycle.
• Use LLMs, coding agents, AI-assisted development environments, and agentic workflows to increase engineering velocity, quality, and effectiveness.
• Apply AI across problem discovery, design, implementation, testing, debugging, code review, documentation, and operational troubleshooting.
• Develop effective human-AI collaboration patterns and establish guardrails for AI-assisted engineering.
• Evaluate emerging AI-native development tools and incorporate those that provide meaningful engineering leverage.
• Help engineering teams evolve from traditional development practices toward AI-native software engineering.
• Identify opportunities to automate repetitive engineering activities and enable AI agents to independently execute well-defined engineering workflows.

AI Platform & Product Capabilities

• Design and build platform capabilities that enable teams to integrate and operate AI-powered experiences at scale.
• Lead technical design for LLM integrations, agent workflows, tool calling, RAG, orchestration, and related AI capabilities where applicable.
• Establish reusable patterns for AI reliability, security, observability, evaluation, scalability, latency, and cost management.
• Partner with product and engineering teams to identify opportunities where AI can meaningfully improve product capabilities or engineering workflows.

Cross-Team Technical Leadership

• Partner within and across engineering teams to provide cross-cutting technical solutions.
• Lead initiatives involving multiple teams, systems, and technical dependencies.
• Consistently deliver deadline-sensitive work that is interdependent with other engineering teams.
• Drive technical alignment across teams without requiring management escalation.
• Resolve architectural conflicts, technical dependencies, and integration challenges.
• Communicate complex engineering and architectural concepts clearly and concisely to engineers, product managers, and other cross-functional stakeholders.
• Influence product and engineering roadmaps through strong technical judgment and demonstrated outcomes.

Continuous Improvement & Engineering Excellence

• Challenge the status quo and continuously improve the platform, architecture, processes, and engineering practices.
• Identify systemic problems proactively and drive them to resolution.
• Improve platform reliability, performance, security, developer experience, and operational efficiency.
• Introduce new tooling and standards that reduce engineering friction and increase developer productivity.
• Regularly participate in and lead peer code reviews, engineering design reviews, architecture reviews, and technical discussions.
• Establish and promote engineering best practices across teams.

Ownership, Execution & Mentorship

• Operate independently on ambiguous, high-complexity problems with minimal direction.
• Own initiatives from problem definition through architecture, execution, delivery, and adoption.
• Anticipate risks and dependencies and proactively establish mitigation strategies.
• Work effectively in a startup-paced environment with a high degree of ownership and accountability.
• Mentor IC1–IC4 engineers and help raise the technical capabilities of the broader engineering organization.
• Share knowledge, encourage experimentation, and foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

Qualifications Required Qualifications

• 11+ years of experience designing, building, shipping, and maintaining software products or platforms.
• B.S./M.S. in Computer Science, Engineering, or an equivalent technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated experience designing and building reliable, scalable, performant, and secure platforms or distributed systems.
• Experience building and integrating with API-based platforms, with a strong understanding of REST and other RPC-based systems.
• Strong experience building and maintaining microservices using one or more of Python, Golang, Java, or C++.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, distributed systems, service design, APIs, databases, observability, security, and reliability.
• Demonstrated experience owning significant technical domains and influencing technical roadmaps.
• Proven ability to lead complex, cross-team initiatives with significant technical dependencies.
• Demonstrated ability to operate independently, identify problems proactively, and drive ambiguous projects to completion.
• Ability to communicate complex engineering concepts concisely and clearly to both technical and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Strong experience participating in peer code reviews, engineering design reviews, and architecture discussions.

Work Personas

We approach our distributed world of work with flexibility and trust. Work personas (flexible, remote, or required in office) are categories that are assigned to ServiceNow employees depending on the nature of their work and their assigned work location. Learn more here. To determine eligibility for a work persona, ServiceNow may confirm the distance between your primary residence and the closest ServiceNow office using a third-party service.

Equal Opportunity Employer

ServiceNow is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, gender identity,  veteran status, or any other category protected by law. In addition, all qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with legal requirements.  

Accommodations

We strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all candidates. If you require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process, or are unable to use this online application and need an alternative method to apply, please contact [email protected] for assistance. 

Export Control Regulations

For positions requiring access to controlled technology subject to export control regulations, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR), ServiceNow may be required to obtain export control approval from government authorities for certain individuals. All employment is contingent upon ServiceNow obtaining any export license or other approval that may be required by relevant export control authorities. 

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