Sr Staff Software Engineer

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 lifecyclefrom 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 teams 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 IC1IC4 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 :

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.

Additional Information :

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 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 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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Remote Work :

No

Employment Type :

Full-time